


Avatar 2: My Way

by neytirisdad



Category: Avatar (2009)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Drama & Romance, F/M, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 40,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neytirisdad/pseuds/neytirisdad
Summary: After three Avatars are captured by Tsu'tey and his Omatikayan warriors, the Avatars realize what they could be missing if they return to Earth. COMPLETE.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. ALONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All spoken Na'vi language is (or should be) in italics in this story; if there are no italics, it is just an error. :)
> 
> Ex: _"Hello!"_ = "Kaltxì!"
> 
> Translations in English will be written after some Na'vi.
> 
> Ex: "Kaltxì!" _Hello!,_ she said.

PROLOGUE  
\---

Four score and a few years from today in the 2150s on a moon called "Pandora" lay the vibrant, rich lands belonging to the Omatikaya clan. This particular day marked the passage of only a few months since a brutal war between the Na'vi natives of Pandora and the Resource Development Administration (RDA) from Earth.

It all had started in the 2130s, when the RDA had discovered the thriving land of the Omatikaya clan, named the "Blue Flute" clan in homage to the people's large and blue ceremonial instrument. The RDA coveted their land for their precious metal deposits beneath their territory which was full of the galactic superconductor called "Unobtanium".

Unobtanium powers all life on Earth. For the RDA to mine the superconductor and secure it for themselves, they had to discover a true method to survive the impenetrable conditions of Pandora and complete a considerable amount of labor in a way that was efficient. A solution was found. Years of careful, scientific research and development were then funded by the RDA to create a limited number of multi-million-dollar clones of Na'vi bodies. They were called "avatars".

Avatars were as close to the perfect recreation of Pandora's natives as one could get. They accumulated the near exact DNA of Na'vi, resembling them marvellously close in appearance. The avatars managed to recreate the Na'vis' eight to ten-foot height that towered a human's abilities. The clones also simulated the Na'vis' brilliant, cerulean skin with magnificent stripes along their limbs, body, and their long tails, which lengthened from the root of their spine to their shins. The avatars' skin even captured the Na'vis' bioluminescent dots that resembled freckles and glowed like neon fireflies when darkness fell on Pandora. The dermal spots could be seen as patterns of snowy-white streaks or swirls over the face and body.

Unlike the various shades of colours that human hair appeared in, the hair of the Na'vi shone black as midnight. Their eyes glowed gold with expressive pupils. Seperate from the roundess of human ears, the avatars' Na'vi-inspired anatomy included animated, high-peaked ears with an elvish appearance and keen sensitivity to sounds for hunting and gathering on Pandora. However, not all traces of human evolution could be erased from these phony Na'vi, for there was one small mistake of the avatars that wouldn't disappear: a pinkie finger.

Errors aside, the RDA hoped their avatars would be welcomed into the Omatikaya clan as a display of peace and trust--a link they could exploit to find their way into the Omatikayan's lands and harvest all the Unobtanium they desired.

It had taken a while, but, through understanding, the Omatikaya people began to build amity with the new entrants that looked like them; the avatars. To further those blossoming relations, the RDA began the development of a school in their clan, a school that taught the language and culture of Earth to the Na'vi. This school was headed by the strong-hearted anthropologist and head of the Avatar Program, Dr. Grace Augustine.

Grace and other colleagues, such as a language expert named Dr. Rene Harper, devoted their studies to teaching the Na'vi race a myriad of knowledge, including how to speak and read English and the astronomic basics of the many planets in Pandora's space system and the Solar system of Earth. Grace Augustine became beloved among her young students, and eventually, the elders of the Omatikaya finally allowed humans to be accepted by their highly spiritual and secretive race. With the early avatars' adoption into the Blue Flute clan, surrounding clans obliged the avatars to be welcomed with friendship. As time went on, humans, easily distinguishable between the Na'vi and from their avatars, became known as the "Skypeople", and were treated with friendly indifference as they worked on mining operations that were allowed by the Pandoran natives.

Still, it is human nature to conquer and take what they believe is theirs. A decade and some years later, the dream to access the larger and more profitable Unobtanium stores beneath the Omatikaya clan's sacred domain, called "Hometree", became clear that it was to be very much only a dream. Progress of relations and compromises with the Na'vi were too slow to guarantee the security of Earth's future since that specific area of Unobtainium was left prohibited for exploitation by the Skypeople. With mounting pressure from stakeholders, world leaders, and greedy consumers on Earth, the RDA felt it had no choice but to someday seize the Unobtanium by force. Tensions mounted between the Skypeople and avatars from Earth and the Omatikayans, and coups broke out in both allegiances. Finally, the Omatikayan school, a symbol of trust between the clan, its allies, and the Skypeople, was assaulted by the RDA military to ward off a band of Na'vi insurrectors. The action killed innocents and instilled further hatred in the Na'vi for the human race. Dr. Augstine was kindly excused by the Omatikayan matriarch, Mo'at, and its patriarchal clan leader, Eytukan, to end her operations in the clan. Rene Harper was since never seen again by the RDA, and his whereabouts to them remain a mystery.

The RDA military was led by Colonel Miles Quaritch who had three distinct scars at his temple brazen on him by an Omatikayan creature when he first stepped foot into the clan's forests on a scouting assignment. He knew beyond a doubt that Pandora was not a place to be immediately trusted because of its beauty or for its seemingly benign natives. Therefore, he was eager to be commisoned lead a front that caused the destruction of Hometree, yet it led to the unforeseen death of the Omatikayan clan leader, Eytukan, and, devastatingly, Grace Augustine.

Jake Sully, an injured former Marine on Earth, was a rogue avatar of the RDA. 

He was initiated into Grace's program by the passage of his twin brother, Tommy Sully, who was an intelligent recruit for Grace's avatar program but who died tragically in a fatal robbery a short time before he was en-route to board a six-year long journey on mission craft to the Pandora in attempts to restore relations with the Na'vi and to cultivate more research for Earth's future plans of settlement. Jake closely matched his twin's DNA and was remarkably able to connect to his brother's intended avatar.

Jake, who was once passive about filling in for Tommy's mission, changed his perspective when on a routine, discreet research trip on Pandora with a group that included Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, a studied xenobotanist. He was chased by a fearsome Pandoran creature and found himself saved by Neytiri, the daughter of Eytukan. The Omatikayans believed Jake was lost and adopted him as one of their people. Jake was used as private intel for the RDA military in a last-minute strategy of diplomacy to relocate the Omatikayans from the company's desired mining ground, but Jake, who discovered the priceless meaning of life as a Na'vi, abandoned the mission.

Enraged by Grace's unecessary death in the assault of Hometree, Jake corralled an army of Na'vi clans and led them to victory with alliances such as Norm Spellman and Max Patel, a resident scientist of the stationed RDA, and Trudy Chacon, a trusted and brave pilot, against a final battle for control of Omatikayan mining territory. Jake was championed by the Na"vi that fought by his side as the Omatikaya's "Toruk-makto": the 'One Who Brings The People Together in Times of Great Sorrow'. In the end, Trudy is killed when her helicopter explodes in a searing fireball at Quaritch's calculated attack. 

Ultimately, Jake betrayed his own race, but he earned a place until the end of time among the Omatikayans when his Human soul was forever kept in his Na'vi form in a powerful ritual. 

Tsu'tey, Eytukan's successed clan leader and their former leading warrior, suffers horrible injuries from the war.

The Omatikayans believed he was dead and placed all their trust in Jake Sully, their Toruk Makto, to lead them as the new olo'eyktan.

Norm Spellman and Max Patel are the only humans that are allowed to remain on Pandora while the rest of the RDA's military, employees, associates, and avatars are all given a tight deadline by Jake to salvage what they can of their damage to his territory and leave Pandora.

Unknowingly, Tsu'tey is found barely alive on the battlefield and recovers in a hospital of the RDA base that still remains on Pandora.

With the enormous loss of brave Human and Na'vi soldiers and the devastation that follows war, the Humans do all they can to repair the trust they had broken with the Omatikaya in the spare months they have left to salvage their inventory and pride and return to Earth for an unknown amount of time. One reparation is instituted through a sanctuary to heal wounded Pandorian animals and return them to their habitats. Tsu'tey secretly decides to volunteer at the RDA's sanctuary. There, he shows an inspiring attitude and work ethic, so he is recruited as an honorary staff member for the short time that the Humans will remain on Pandora.

Alongside his surgeon from Los-Angeles, Tanner Martinez-Brown, Tsu'tey becomes acquainted with others at the sanctuary: a Nigerian intern, Victoria Cheong, and her boss from India, an extra-terrestrial vet named Sky Patel who is the big sister to the sanctuary's supervisor, Max Patel, and fiancee to the RDA's fiery CEO, Parker Selfridge.

Although Tsu'tey finds joy in his new friends and activities, his time with the humans causes personal issues. His relationship with his warrior co-captain and best friend, Ree'ahn, suffers, and Tsu'tey feels betrayed by his past love, Neytiri, who had mated to Jake Sully and bound them as one--forever.

Everyone--the exiled humans who had once arrived to the new frontier of Pandora with noble intentions for humankind and the Na'vi who once sought a peace with humans to move forward into a progressive relationship for both species--feels heavily conflicted about their true destiny and the outlook of the future after the Great Battle. For now, Pandora's wilderness moves ahead in its predictable cycles of the season as it had faithfully done since the dawn of its creation. The Omatikayans continue their ancient ways of life as they had never been disturbed by the arrival of other beings. One Omatikayan, Tsu'tey, walked through his homeland after his period with the humans and after a prayer to the Na'vi's all knowing deity, Eywa, of a better tomorrow.

\----  
ACT 1  
\----

ALONE  
\---  
Tsu'tey's companion, from an earlier, simpler childhood on Pandora, spotted Tsu'tey from high upon a branch as thick as a riverbank. He believed that Tsu'tey looked odd when he walked without a purpose. 

He shimmied from a slippery vine, leapt silently, and planted his bare, blue feet firmly into the dripping bark below him. Peering down now, Tsu'tey's head was in view.

Tsu'tey became like a tree, only moving his golden eyes in small shifts, his tail flicking about. In an instant movement, Tsu'tey's widebow was secured in hand, and an arrow slithered out from his pack.

His friend shrank back and pressed into a shadow of moss. He waited with squeezed eyes and a bitten smile.

Shuk!

Tsu'tey's companion gasped. His heart raced wildly to wait for the pain. Then, his four fingers fell from his forehead, blue and dry. He saw a thinned shank with a colorful tail bobbing over his forehead and before his eyes. He released a sound he hadn't realized he was holding in his chest. One breath closer, and--

"Be done with your games, Ree'ahn! I know you are there!" Tsu'tey called up to him with a voice as deep and forceful as drums, speaking like the Skypeople, which he sometimes chose to do. 

Their eyes met, both bright, gold and laughing, now. A tiny smirk lingered on Tsu'Tey's face so that Ree'ahn would be sure to see it before he sauntered on. The widebow returned on his dress.

Ree'ahn's lips stretched wide. "Tell me where you have been!" Ree'ahn grinned. His shoulder-length black hair swung in the wind overhead Tsu'tey like a waving hand. "You always hunt with me!"

"It was not important. And not a hunt." Came a weak mutter in Na'vi from below. Tsu'tey heard Ree'ahn's feet pounce from tree to tree overhead while he pressed on into the forest.

"Then...you have talked to the ancestors...at the Tree of Souls?"

Tsu'tey chose to stay silent.

Ree'ahn kept in pursuit. "If not there...then you were with a secret woman!"

"Skxawng!!" Moron!, Tsu'tey spat with a frown and a tsk. A secret woman for a lead warrior? He had no more patience for women.

Tsu'tey had eyes for no one. Neytiri belonged to Jakesully, and was happy without him. His heart belonged to his people now, and only them, forever. He didn't want to think of all those things anymore. There was work to do with the Tsawtute today.

"I will see you another time." Tsu'tey announced. He trekked with haste.

Ree'ahn's grin dimmed as he watched Tsu'tey disappear. His brows wrinkled and made his eyes dull, lonely and sad. Ree'ahn had heard it again. It was the same voice that Tsu'tey used when he wanted to be alone from everybody, even free from the company of his best friend of close to twenty long years. His throat thickened.

Tsu'tey's gait was hurried from far below, and Ree'ahn knew that following behind would only drive his friend farther into the forest. He would ask Tsu'tey what troubled him later, yes, another time, then.

After one more moment of chagrin, Ree'ahn searched for a simple path down from his height. Then, he walked the mile home, alone.

Away, Tsu'tey yipped in the air for his ikran. "Eee-yai! Eee-yai!"

His light eyes shifted in the skies, and then shone with a smile when his ikran's screech echoed from on high. The trees overhead soon began to dance with a wind from large, sapphire-grey wings.

As Tsu'tey's braids flapped behind him above the canopy, his hands lowered his maktoband, a jeweled crown from atop his head with a carved talon of a beast, over his eyes. Tsu'tey's ikran soared where the makto's memory bided her.


	2. YOU WILL FLY HOME SOON

YOU WILL FLY HOME SOON  
\---  
Tsu'tey descended to the metal village of the Skypeople on his ikran, Unyu. His stomach tightened fast at the rush and he gripped her antennae. A smile sprouted between his lips. He thought she must be hungry.

The grass was hot and wet under his feet when he slid from her wing. Tsu'tey's ikran hissed and slithered after her hunter, slithering her head under his arms and nipping at the pail in the hands of the human who had waved to her in the air. In Tsu'tey's haste to calm her, Unyu had bitten him.

"Mawey!" Calm down!, Tsu'tey said, squeezing her powerful jaws together.

Unyu jerked from him and blinked her sapphire eyes elsewhere. They found an insect. Tsu'tey heard snickers from the Human before him.

"Oel ngati kameie, Tsu'tey." I see you, Tsu'tey. "This is a first!" A copper-skinned, curly haired human said.

Behind his mask, the alien's black eyes noticed the clinking talismans and beaded jewelry that decorated Tsu'tey's body and hair. He wondered how long it took him to put all of them on, or if he ever took them off.

Tsu'tey knew, from the white blanket the alien was wearing, he was a tsyintist or a healer. They were the types of Tsawtute who used the most words that he could not yet understand. He had not seen this man before, but assumed him to be Max Patel. He had heard Jake Sully call him so.

Tsu'tey approached the Skyperson with a touch to his temple and a polite return of "I see you". The human held out a pail of treats to him.

Taking it, and feeding Unyu, Tsu'tey asked calmly in English, "what do you mean to say...'this is a beginning'?" This was certainly not his first time coming to them. His ikran was now sedated while she grated roots the size of legs with her teeth.

The shorter human with the pail had not finished grinning. "what I mean is: you're early."

Tsu'tey rubbed the warm, slick skin on her neck as Unyu ate, and he thought of how to respond. He decided on, "it is better than to be late."

"Of course," The tsyintist chirped. Maxpatel and the warrior left the ikran to finish her meal in peace.

The tsyintist followed Tsu'tey in the grass behind the humongous trailers of the remote hospital. Tsu'tey regarded the little man as he wiggled his fingers on a blinking device on the giant wall of weaved metal strings that towered even over himself.

Before Tsu'tey could ask what his duties were, the man spoke.

"My name is Max Patel, I'll be your head supervisor now since Norm has changed responsibilities."

Max gestured for Tsu'tey to go forward into a gate.

Tsu'tey walked forward.

"Sky should tell you everything you need to do; see her over there?" continued Max. "We found a lot more animals, so you'll be busy today."

Tsu'tey panned the familiar field of a sanctuary that had cleared the forest to flat grasses, the square shelters in the space where the Skypeople ate and relieved themselves, roaming pa'li, and many young and endangered ikran and fikio, who were similar in build as the ikran yet smaller and less colorful and preferred to stay nearer to the ground in flight. Tsu'tey took note of the strange fixtures of the sanctuary that the Skypeople had built themeselves. The animals in their keep would fly over or enter through as they slapped their limbs together and laughed.

After much searching, Tsu'tey could still not see Sky, but assumed the woman was in the shelter, since he learned that the Tsawtute had to relieve themselves at least eleven times a day.

"Lunch is at noon, and, Tsu'tey, you are more than welcome to join us. If you'd like. You've been such a great help!"

"No, thank you." Tsu'tey said.

Max shrugged and turned to leave Tsu'tey to his usual work.

Tsu'tey started. He remembered Neytiri had quietly asked him to search for someone at the sanctuary. He called to Max, "Seze! The ikran of Neytiri! Does she live?"

Max stood for a while at the gate and then shook his head quickly.

Tsu'tey withdrew. He reserved the sad news to himself and turned his attention to the next tastk.

He spotted the small gathering of his new coworkers talking together under the shade of one of the shelters in the field; they were all female, soft-skinned, tiny-eyed and so scrawny-nothing like Omatikayan women. Some Skywomen were pale as a cloud, and others tanned like Maxpatel. It still amazed Tsu'tey that the aliens came in so many colors and features.

The females stopped their cackling. They stared into Tsu'tey's golden eyes.

Tsu'tey didn't expect the women to look so afraid, but he hadn't seen them before either. He had worked only with Norm, alone, before then.

Tsu'tey had introduced himself by his full name, and still the women were speechless. Tsu'tey frowned. He did not know what else they wanted, and he did not care. He was there to help the animals heal from the turmoil of the war so they could all return to their homes, where they forever belonged. It was not right for them to be there with the aliens and only in their care. The alien women did not work as hard as Normspellman. Tsu'tey thought maybe the heat had made them all lazy.

Tsu'tey ordered to anyone of them who would listen, "which one of you is called Sky?"

Near noon, the animals of the Human sanctuary had tired and found their own shade to curl under and sleep. The women rested too, by continuing to talk without end.

Tsu'tey sat alone, as he chose to, away from the women and far away from Sky, who smiled at him too often when she did not mean it.

He laid back in quiet. It was almost time to return to the clan. He imagined Neytiri's face when she would hear about Seze. He missed Seze as well.

He would tell Neytiri today. It did not make sense to wait.

He always made Neytiri unhappy, hadn't he? Tsu'tey shut his eyes. She deserved joy. She should have a man like Jakesully to protect her, and to love her, always.

There was a bawl in his ear.

He shot up straight-his hands flinched to his knife-then, Tsu'tey hogged at the sight below him. A tiny ikran. "Ko." Tsu'tey commanded.

The ikran hadn't flinched.

"Ko." Tsu'tey insisted, a little louder. It budged once when he tapped it's nose to send it away as he would Unyu. Then, he hesitated. He saw the ikran had only one eye, and his heart fell at that. As he was forever changed by the Great Battle, so was the ikran.

Tsu'tey didn't realize he had reached out to touch the place where the creature's other eye should have been. Tsu'tey thought of how many more animals were left to wander Pandora like this one had.

The young hunter batted its wings when two hyperrealistic images of the Na'vi's fingers came near it's eye, but it could not float very high. It flew as a rock did, and landed with a small sound of its clawed feet in the grass.

The bright colors on it were male, and it had beautiful streaks between its eyes. Tsu'tey became enchanted with watching it, and he lost his count of time. Tsu'tey called it and he let it crawl over his arms and over his lap. It was tiring its own self leaping everywhere and back into his hands. Tsu'tey's palm became wet from the ikran's tongue that explored him.

"Oiss!" Tsu'tey jerked his fingers away from its teeth and counted them. Damn!, he thought. They were vicious from birth!

Tsu'tey could remember how his legs trembled when his ikran had first laid eyes on him as a teenager. Unyu had shreiked in his face and deafened him. His swing then had no feeling in his hands and he had whispered several prayers at once.

The tiny ikran twirled fast in a circle in Tsu'tey's lap. Tsu'tey lips curled by themselves. It only wanted to play some more. The ikran fixed on the Na'vi with a bend in its legs, ready to jump. For being nearly blind, the ikran leaped very fast to Tsu'tey's open hands. Its body was warm and alive in Tsu'tey's palms. He would be a fearsome thing in the sky when he was older.

Tsu'tey couldn't help touching the ikran as he did his own. Time had taught him that ikran loved to be coddled under their snout.

"Thisis no place foryou," Tsu'tey said between only he and the ikran. He felt a vibration under his fingers. The ikran's little eye squinted and then closed. Tsu'tey chuckled at how precious it was. "You will fly home soon."


	3. CROWNING JAKESULLY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsu'tey makes Jake Sully the eytukan.

CROWNING JAKESULLY

Tsu'tey sprang across a lake that bubbled gently in the night. He landed swiftly and the forest's bioluminescence flared neon green under his toes.

The path was a secret shortcut he thought he was used to, but there were times when all of the trees looked alike. Tsu'tey stopped only for a moment. He heard the roar of the little waterfall in the distance and knew he was only a small way from home. He moved on.

There was a good smell of the spices of the group meal from here. His refusal to eat the food of the Skypeople day after day had only made his appetite strong when night came.

He thought he should walk faster, or his people would grow more suspicious of his whereabouts of the day than usual. Also, that night was the crowning of Jakesully. Tsu'tey was the one appointed for the ceremony, since Eytukan, the former clan leader, had lost his life in the war with the Skypeople. There was to be a long dance, a long speech, and a long, long meal.

Tsu'tey planned to slip away from the celerbrations early. There was only so long he could stand seeing his own decorations placed on someone else, when he would have been the one to stand in the Eykutan's place and take Neytiri for his own.

Jakesully was Toruk Makto, and Tsu'tey knew it was a supernatural will for him to lead the clan, like the people had urged him to believe, but was knowing these things supposed to make him happy about it all?

A weight smacked Tsu'tey to his knees.

Tsu'tey grabbed hold of whatever it was and tumbled with it. In the blackness, there was giggling.

There was only two people that could surprise him like that, but it must've been Ree'ahn. The other had grown out of those childish games. Tsu'tey let out a chuckle as they tussled. It was a little funny how distracted he had become lately.

When Tsu'tey pinned him, a slender hand brought down his head-and kissed him slow like a woman.

Tsu'tey jerked to his feet. His glowing eyes blinked widely. A gasp shot at him, "Jake?!"

It wasn't a question, but an apology. Neytiri was mortified beyond belief.

Tsu'tey glared. "Za'u," Hurry up, he bellowed, pulling her up hard. He pushed her in front of him and scoffed.

The former betroved walked in dead silence, except for the nightlife. The plants were brighter along this side of the river.

It felt strange to be alone with Neytiri, then. She was Tshaik, and he shouldn't have these thoughts about her. Tsu'tey's lips were still burning; he was glad Neytiri walked ahead of him so she wouldn't see him feeling them.

"Ma Tsu'tey, I thoughtyouwere Jake." Neytiri muttered for the first time, honest. It was her last thought that anyone but Jake would be ever be late to a traditional ceremony.

"I look nothing like that Dreamwalker! Whatwereyoudoingplayinggamesinthedark, youmoron?!"

Neytiri shoved Tsu'tey and bared her teeth with a scheee!

Tsu'tey hissed in her eyes like they were both small and about to fight again. Jakesully might be afraid of her, but not Tsu'tey.

Neytiri flinched, and Tsu'tey thought she must have remembered who she was with. Her tail whipped like she wanted to fight. Then, Neytiri went ahead at a faster pace.

Before they reached the ruins of their home tree, Tsu'tey took her hand and pulled her aside.  
He muttered, "don'tlet me ruin yournight. Forgetthis hashappened. I wantyouto be happy."

Neytiri looked calmer. Tsu'tey had chivalry at least sometimes. "Don'ttellanyone." She whispered quickly. She knew he wouldn't tell, but she warned him anyway. "Kiva ko." Let'sgo. Her arm tugged, and she glanced Tsu'tey's way.

"Neytiri. Seze is dead."

Neytiri's eyes bulged like he just stabbed her. She breathed out and looked down. Her lips wrinkled.

Tsu'tey, unsure of what to do, stood as tears plipped from his old mate's eyes. He thought he had always made her cry. There was never a time when she had smiled with him. If there was, he couldn't remember it well. Tonight would be proof that he never deserved her.

They could both hear the drums and instruments starting to harmonize from not too far away. Tsu'tey helped dry Neytiri's eyes. He led her to the fire and only let go of her hand when the Omatikaya would see.

Neytiri shared a quiet walk with Tsu'tey to the ruins of Hometree. Tsu'tey tugged her gently over forest paths they used to wear to shrubs under their feet and he whispered at her to be careful around objects in the dark that they had known were there since they were children.

Another time in his teenaged years before his Iknimaya would have allowed Tsu'tey to walk without care and speak to the olo'eyktan's daughter, Neytiri, about how cold the river would be they chose to swim, or where they should hide together until the forest's lights faded for the new day to begin, but Neytiri would not laugh him silent anymore. The war had erased their old, simple life. Half of their people had just been slaughtered, and Seze was dead. Yet, they both held on to the lingering warmth in their hands as if it were a candleflame.

The couple saw a yellow glow in the forest, and soon their bodies burned and their noses filled with a smell of game and spices roasting in a fire. The voices of the Omatikaya layered in click-clacks and nasally vowels to a cacophony in the night.

Neytiri's hand burned cold. She glanced and saw Tsu'tey's fingers no longer threaded in her own. He had disappeared. Neytiri expected it. Tsu'tey was just as flighty when they had spent time together in their youth. Nevertheless, Neytiri's heart had always grown heavy with emptiness when he did.

Then, Neytiri's mother and former Tshaik of the clan, Mo'at, appeared and graced her hands on Neytiri's shoulders.

"It is time," Mo'at spoke. Her wide nose and smile looked homely. Neytiri was inspired to smile too, for she always had when her mother was in a good mood after her father's death.

"Tsu'tey!"

Tsu'tey looked at the group he had past who were timid in their conversation around him. He knew one of them well. "Kame ngat, Ma'wure."

"Kame ngat." Ma'wure had the lightest expression out of all of the four other Omatikayans. "Ree'ahn has said you have found a secret woman that even I do not know? That is impossible!" He laughed. "Unless she is not one of the people."

"Your cousin speaks his usual nonsense! There is no one. I have been given a different path, it seems."

Ma'wure looked the same as his peers: hesitant to say the wrong words. He studied Tsu'tey. "You look nervous."

Tsu'tey scoffed to him with a ragged sound. "There is no reason to be afraid to do something that has been practiced for centuries."

"You will not be forgotten by us." Another Na'vi of the group spoke up. "We will always remember you as the true olo'eyktan."

"That will be true forever, Tsu'tey!" Said a second.

"Irayo," Tsu'tey whiffed to them all in one quiet breath. Tsu'tey parted because he didn't want to feel pitied.

Tsu'tey found a place to reside that was nearest to the center of the mealfire where he would soon pair with Neytiri to dress Jake in every piece Eytukan had worn, including the three black fangs, of the palulukan, on twirled lace that Tsu'tey could never see himself without.

Ree'ahn sprinted to Tsu'tey on the dirt and crashed beside him in a racket of his beads and necklaces lit aglow by nearby flames.

"It will not be long now." Ree'ahn whispered quickly to Tsu'tey. "I will be laughing the loudest at your misery!"

"Fnu."

"Fnu nga!" You shut up! Ree'ahn snarled, "esh."

"Your sister is more of a friend than you are. Look at how she smiles at me tonight and encourages me." Tsu'tey lifted the girl that ran to him and he gave her to Ree'ahn.

"I will be smiling, too." Ree'ahn said with smart eyes and full arms. "Because you will quickly know how it feels to be forgotten."

Tsu'tey's glare matched the look he was given from Ree'ahn.

Mo'at and Neytiri cleared space from the dancing fire flames and presented Jakesully. Tsu'tey heard the Omatikayans scream loud shouts and praises of "Toruk Makto!" into the void of stars and space in place of the sky-high branches of their fallen Hometree. The Omatikayans cheered at Mo'at's invitation for Tsu'tey to begin the ritual.

"Have the best of luck," Ree'ahn whispered to Tsu'tey as Tsu'tey stood to seal his fate forever.


	4. TSU'TEY'S SECRET

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsu'tey makes a promise to Ree'ahn.

Unyu floated through the sky as would a eagle on Planet Earth. From her head with two slender antennae to the transparent and glinting tapers of her wings, Unyu was painted by Pandora as a watercolor of violet, black, and sky-blue. Accents of gold on her skin brightened the ikran where it may. 

Tsu'tey leveled on her and kept close watch over the whizzing plants and wildlife of his home's forests. Mammoth trees, herds of horned stumbeest with slow-moving might, and packs of snorting and quick-scampering nantang populated the lands below.

"Kiva ko!" Tsu'tey spoke softly to Unyu once the buildings of the Skypeople, who he and everyone he knew called--or cursed as--"the Tsawtute", were in sight. Unyu dived to the RDA base, at the grounds of its hospital.

Pandora's wind whistled between Tsu'tey's toes while Tsu'tey led Unyu over a rocky bend near the path to Ayram-alusing, named by the Skypeople as "The Hallelujah Mountains". The big mountains floated in the clouds like suspended giants and moaned as they adjusted every once and again to the extremely low gravity of the lands. They hid the morning star when Tsu'tey maneuvered through them. The formations covered he and Unyu in a shadow as they sailed to the RDA base.

Without warning, Tsu'tey's ikran reared and beat her wings high in the air.

Tsu'tey shouted in surprise.

He dug his heels into the nostrils of her shoulders and flattened himself against her hot, pulsing neck so he wouldn't fall to his death. His necklaces dug into his skin every time Unyu's huge body flexed backwards. The mountains she had just flown near then looked small enough to fit onto Tsu'tey's smallest finger.

Unyu bulleted down and Tsu'tey's lungs squeezed. The mountains zoomed to him, the view of the highlands pidgeonholed into a tunnel, and Tsu'tey pressed his eyes shut---

\---Unyu burst forth from a gorge between two mountains into dashes of white, brown and green. All Tsu'tey knew when he opened his eyes was the neck wrapped in his arms and the air rushing by his ears.

Slow down!, Tsu'tey begged Unyu in their tsaheylu. His laugh was a grimace at the speed. They had always played together while flying from time to time, and this was exhilarating, but he liked it more when he was in control.

She cried in return, and Tsu'tey immediately knew in his heart something was chasing her. The sound behind him confirmed it. Another ikran flying at a makto's command. The sound had came from far behind him, and the more Unyu panicked in flight, the closer the male ikran's breath felt on Tsu'tey's back.

Tsu'tey withered inside, knowing that he was caught and must explain why he chose to be anywhere near the Skypeople who had killed many of their own people and brethren in battle.

Tsu'tey's guilt became irritation when he found the strength to pull him self upright and reclaim control. Unyu stopped in mid-air and Tsu'tey prepared to face the unknown Na'vi.

An Omatikayan swept a golden-yellow ikran before Unyu.

Tsu'tey leaned back from the wind of the other beast that racketed the beads in his hair. He gave the animal a familiar look, but didn't give into an urge to watch it fly after one of the meats for Unyu in his pack.

The makto wore weaved armor around his middle, a braided mosiac of shapes that plated his chest and that matched, less elaborately, the wear on Tsu'tey's chest, and a smug smile that left no doubt that he was also a warrior.

They both gyrated on the backs of their hovering ikrans and waited for the other to explain himself. Tsu'tey was reminded how fierce the curved eyewings of the maktoband made the warrior look. It had glinting, black gems clustered on the edges.

_"Here is another reason they call you Ree'ahn The Troublemaker."_ Tsu'tey said. His breath was just starting to calm like Unyu's.

Ree'ahn's hair flew as a mess of silk without braids from behind his shoulders. He panted, _"I see you, too."_

Tsu'tey mirrored his greeting, but quickly.

_"I want to know where you fly to your woman,"_ Ree'ahn revealed his eyes, which were never not full of mischief. _"and I will know today. She is from the horse clan isn't she? You have always preferred them fiesty."_ Ree'ahn scoffed at Tsu'tey's glower with a hearty chuckle. "You know I am not lying."

Ree'ahn found it funny that Tsu'tey still made an effort to scare him after all this time. "Have you gotten tired of all the women throwing themselves at your feet to be your mate since Neytiri has chosen Jakesully? I think that any man that refuses Piral has gone mad--" Ree'ahn blinded Unyu's path to flight. "--wait!! Wait. To tell the truth, I only want to know. This isn't your way to keep secrets, Tsu'tey."

_"You would not understand, Ree'ahn," Tsu'tey said. "but I will tell you if you promise you will not tell anyone."_

Ree'ahn waited.

_"I am working with the Skypeople."_

The curious excitement drained from Ree'ahn's face, and a sneer came to the surface which was unfitting for him.

Tsu'tey's voice raised. _"The tsyintists are still treating the people and the animals. Many are still wounded. We can't heal all of them at once. I have seen it with my own eyes--their medicine heals ten times as many people than we could in one day. Until they return to their planet, we need their help."_

_"I have told you,"_ Ree'ahn growled. _"those demons only want to experiment with our bodies."_ Ree'ahn jabbed his fingers to the distance. _"They made Jakesully to destroy Hometree. Tsu'tey, who knows what they do to the animals! And you help them to do it!"_

_"Don't you ever say I would do something like that! I don't trust them either. I am there to watch them to make sure they are not doing those things. So far, nothing has happened."_ Tsu'tey straightened himself on Unyu. _"Move out of her way!"_

Ree'ahn fixed on Tsu'tey, his brows leaning together. He ushered his own ikran to glide under Unyu, and Tsu'tey shot forward with a screech echoing behind him.

Ree'ahn calculated when he could follow at a safe distance and then he lunged his ikran after Tsu'tey with a determined "hoo-wah!"


	5. JAKE APPOINTS TSU'TEY

JAKE APPOINTS TSU'TEY

"Hush!" Tsu'tey said to the chattering group carving shortbows in his watch the next day. Tsu'tey couldn't ignore those quiet sniffles any longer; he knew one of them had hurt themselves. The class watched Tsu'tey cross the circle of children in the forest with a careful lean in his eyes. "Please help me, teacher." A girl said. His eyes flew open wide at the blood on her hands and her knife. He grabbed her wrists and jolted her. "Kempe si nga?!" What are you doing?!, the lead warrior whined. Not only was she doing it wrong, she had hurt herself and didn't tell him. Tears rolled down her cheeks. With one glance from Tsu'tey, a pair of twin boys knew to look away and finish their work. To his relief, the cuts were small. Tsu'tey produced his own knife to help her along. He told her to never be afraid to ask for help, and he placed her hand over his and showed her again how to shave the wood safely until she began to smile with understanding. At the end of it all, her shortbow was fine for target practice. It was her time to aim as the twins had done. Tsu'tey kept the girl's body steady while she rattled under his hands. The children always shook like leaves the first time that they handled a bow and arrow. Tsu'tey reminded her to be calm and be confident, and that he knew it was painful, but she would improve with time. Though she was almost breathless, her chin, trembling, rose up. They eyed the target together. "Ko," Tsu'tey said. It missed. He felt her deflate in his arms. "It' is onlyyourfirst time. Do not look so upset!" He hid laughter while her tears wet his hardened palms on her face. She always wanted to please him so much. He noticed that she was one to cry a lot, but he reasoned that it was something she would grow out of one day. Tsu'tey heard "Jakesully!" behind him and turned to see the rest of his class chasing the man he had done his best to ignore all morning. Neytiri was with him and smiled at the children. Jake met the warrior's eyes warmly and approached him fast. 

"Go home with your brothers; I'll see you tomorrow." Tsu'tey gently pushed the girl along, and she did as he said. Jakesully and Neytiri grinned to her before she slipped away, too.

Tsu'tey greeted the Tshaik and Olo'eyktan.

Neytiri asked Tsu'tey if he had made the girl cry, but she laughed with Jake before Tsu'tey could defend himself.

Tsu'tey didn't miss how happy they looked together, and his mind wandered to Neytiri's kiss that was not meant for him.  
"I wanted to speak with you before you disappeared again! Where do you go everyday?" Jake let out a curious chuckle. His eyes were grinning like he had a surprise for Tsu'tey, and this made the warrior slightly nervous.

Tsu'tey reasoned that Jake wouldn't have found where he trained the hunters on his own. His eyes shifted briefly to Neytiri. She mistook it as him wanting to be left alone, but then it was too late to say otherwise.

"What is it about?" Tsu'tey walked to the shade and sat on the wet dirt. He noticed he still held the girl's shortbow.

"Brother." Jakesully loved to call him that. He made himself comfortable and landed his five fingers on Tsu'tey's shoulder. "I want you to be my advisor!"

Jakesully's smile turned fond. "Tsu'tey , you're knowledgable, focused, hard-working, a good-no, an excellent warrior, and..." Jakesully made another one of his gestures with a pull of his lips and a bounce of his shoulders. "...you're great with kids! Well, that doesn't have much to do with it, but not too many people are!"

Tsu'tey looked him in the eye. "You must...understand children to teach them. How will they survive if they do not learn well?"  
"See what I mean? This is the perfect job for you."

"Hmph," Tsu'tey twirled the girl's shortbow in his hand. "I think yes is what I say that you want. You want to know everything I know."

Tsu'tey touched the shortbow to Jakesully's chest that was covered with Tsu'tey's handmade necklace of fangs that proclaimed himself to be the leader of the people.

Jakesully watched the wood push him. A deep frown replaced the smirk on Tsu'tey's face.

"What do you know about to be olo'eyktan, ah?!"

Jake was looking up at him now with the crossbow pushed into his chest.

"There is more than to fight! There are rites-ways of life you must know by heart! Can you sing how many worship songs? Did Mo'at smack your head if you could not tell her all the names of the olo'eyktan before you?!"

"You're right, I don't know shit."

Confusion at the last word twisted the warrior's face.

Jake took the chance to force away the potential weapon from his heart. "But I can do this, with the right people beside me. Neytiri taught me to be one if the people, but you can teach me to lead them. That would mean everything to me." Jakesully lowered his voice. "You said you would fly with me once. Now, I need your help again."

Jake watched Tsu'tey patiently while Tsu'tey took his seat again with his lungs filling and squeezing out air in quiet, angry breaths.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be, Tsu'tey thought. His head shook. His whole purpose in life was given to another man in less than one cycle and he had no choice but to accept it. Before he had come, he and Neytiri were just beginning to get along. Maybe in a short while she would learn to love him, and know that he would be a good leader for her and would always try to please her as she desired. Not too long ago, Tsu'tey's words were law, but now Jakesully's words were more important. He had trained to be the leader of the Omatikaya for almost his entire life-didn't Jakesully know what that meant?!

"Tsu'tey? Hey! Relax, man, you're shaking!" Jakesully had both hands on him when Tsu'tey looked up.  
"Oh." The sounds of Pandora rushed back to Tsu'tey's ears.

Jakesully's eyes were the kind that could put anyone at peace, like the warm eyes of Neytiri's father, Eytukan. Without knowing why, Tsu'tey looked away.

"I didn't say you couldn't think it over. You were my first choice, that's all. Just think about it."


	6. ALONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Omatikayan warriors chase a threat.

###  TRESSPASSERS

Ree'ahn pounded his feet through the forest, nearly missing a charred pile of roots in his way. He crashed into two talking Na'vi, pulled them up--to see Mi'nat with eyes wider than he had ever seen them--and sputtered an apology before they could finish gasping, "tsamsiyu?"

A floaty feeling came just before the dirt punched him in the gut. The sound of childrens' laughter rushed by his ears when he scrambled up and shook his ankle free of their tree-swinging toy of tied leaves. His thighs burned, but in a few paces would be the cliffs. Ree'ahn's hands spidered over his waistguard to pull the ties tight to his armor and widebow. He trusted his body to know what to do when he launched himself with a grunt to the other side of the deep-split land that rose far above the pit below it.

He rolled, pawed the grasses to get to his feet, and kept running until he finally emerged from the shadows of some huge leaves and topped himself on a post higher than the canopy of the forest.

A wet breeze from the great lake greeted him first. From here above the shade of the forest was a clear view of the outskirts of the Omatikaya territory, a hazy sight of the "Hallelujah Mountains" to the west, the mouth of their waters in the east, and a horizon that Hometree, or what remained of it, rested in the middle of.

Ree'ahn's released a big sigh of relief. He could see the other warriors from his height just as well as they could see him, and he heard a conversation carry on without him. Piral's racketing laughter echoed on the cliffs and she barked threats at one of the warriors. From the cool-headed voice they all heard in return, it was directed at Itoyo.

Business as usual. Ree'ahn stretched to his full height to survey the view like he was there the entire time.

The alien village was still pictured in his mind. When he had seen it from his ikran, he thought it looked like the color had been drained from the land.

"Where were you?!" Piral's yell barreled Ree'ahn's way.

"I only had to pee!"

"Wiya, Ree'ahn! Did you drink the whole river?!"

The warriors liked the joke. The way Ree'ahn saw it, it kept him from admitting he had followed Tsu'tey to the Tsawtute and saw him talking and working and eating with them, like he was one of them.

"Do what Tsu'tey tells you to do." Piral's voice was loud enough for Ree'ahn to hear her. Piral sounded even more pissed off when she was not yelling at him.

Ree'ahn sucked his fangs in an irritated sound. Maybe Piral believed that proving she was the best warrior of them all would make Tsu'tey want to finally take her to his bed and ravish her, but that was not Ree'ahn's plan.

Ree'ahn started when he heard something else: the shrill warning-whoop of the tsamsiyu'eyktan.

"What?!" Ree'ahn seethed to himself. 

There Tsu'tey was, necklaces and all, waving at the warriors to follow a suspicious threat. He thought if Tsu'tey had returned before he did, there was no way the warriors would not have noticed, but Tsu'tey was not the son of Ateyo for nothing.

Questions like how long Tsu'tey had been there came to Ree'ahn, but his body was conditioned to follow Tsu'tey's every command even if he thought about it or not. The danger, whatever it might be, thrilled Ree'ahn more. Noises rolled from Ree'ahn's lungs without his control because his blood rushed with the same excitement of his warriors who all sprinted down from their positions above the canopy to capture...whatever it might be that time. 

Tsu'tey pushed his bow to open a curtain of wide leaves and he arched his head to follow the mystery Dreamwalker in sweaty rags and dirty boots wandering their territory without Jakesully's permission. Tsu'tey made sure his feet didn't make a noise on the branch he squatted on by balancing on his arches and pressing his weight into them. He glanced to where he had come. 

His warriors Itoyo and Ree'ahn would arrive any time now, but he wanted to be the first to capture that one; he would make her an example to show that their land was not a playground that the aliens could enter and leave whenever they wished.

"...I'm sure they're watching us right now," the Dreamwalker said to someone else.

Tsu'tey's eyes flashed--there were one, two... three more of them. One looked around and Tsu'tey snapped in place. Two of them laughed about something and kept chattering in English. When they didn't notice him, he slithered a little closer to the group onto another tree.

This first alien was taken by the kenten. The kenten whirled in fours and then eights below Tsu'tey and he could hear the woman giggling above the crickee-crickee! sounds the little creatures made in alarm. She wouldn't be smiling for long. 

As she lifted a kenten to her hand, she had no idea that Tsu'tey was aiming his arrow between her breasts with a wicked smile. His golden eyes twitched at every step she made under his aim. Tsu'tey's tail whipped as his focus fine-tuned and his breathing went silent. He would strike the tresspasser in the heart easily and tell Jakesully it was an accident. His arm yanked back---

\---then, she walked out of his range.

Tsu'tey's taught muscles went slack. He sighed a little and grunted.

He stretched out a bolo instead. It would be a very awkward throw, but the chord was better for moving targets, and with enough speed, it was strong enough to snap an ikran's jaws shut. He squeezed the weapon. He would do his best. If the Dreamwalker ran, he would call to Piral, who was ahead of him in the perimeter and could wrestle anything to the ground herself.

With a strong whiff, he spun the bolo and let it fly. The Dreamwalker yelped and fell.

Tsu'tey was on her before she could come up for air. He heard the others rush to him, but he paid them no mind.

"Nga za'u ftu peseng?! Fyape syaw fko ngar?! Ah?!!"

She made a tiny cry when Tsu'tey pushed her shoulder in the ground and dug his big knee in her stomach. She felt the blade of the warrior's knife on her throat, it was burning hot from the heat and with one wrong move it could slice her head clean off. She squeezed the Na'vi's wrists to plead at him, since she only could scream in gasps and she forgot everything she ever learned in Na'Vi.

The woman's hands went slick with sweat on his wrists. It hurt to breathe while this warrior, with heat flying from his lips and with his hair and beads in her nose and mouth and with venom in his wild eyes yelled the same things to her, now at the top of his lungs. Her intestines were being crushed by his leg, so how did he expect her to answer at all? She didn't move in fear of the Na'vi getting more irate than he already was.

"Ftang!" Tsu'tey swung his knife and hissed at the other Dreamwalkers that were becoming bold enough to pull at his arms. They staggered away from him and shook in place like the cowards they always were.

The Dreamwalker under his knee still refused to talk. But, up close for the small moment, Tsu'tey saw that she was not unattractive for a woman. His pulse raced against his will when he examined her, starting with her fearful, expressive eyes with full lashes. The piercings on her ears looked a lot like the ones of....

Tsu'tey moved away because something felt strange.

The Dreamwalker wobbled to her elbows, groaning. She held her stomach, breathing like she had just ran miles. "Damn," the Dreamwalker moaned; it sounded like something she wouldn't say very often.

Her eyes focused on him and widened when she recognized just who the warrior was. The permanent creases in the middle of his brows had to belong to him.

Tsu'tey's eyes scanned her again in a frenzy. He looked to her followers in false bodies, too. They also looked familiar.

Threatening yips and rustles in the bush came from all around the woman, and then a tight, menacing pair of Na'vi sprung out behind Tsu'tey with their arrows aimed between her eyes.


	7. THE BEST SINGER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake doubts himself as clan leader.

Itoyo and Ree'ahn took Tsu'tey's tackle on the Dreamwalker as their cue to reveal themselves from their hiding places. Ree'ahn's bloodthirsty screeches and Itoyo's protective cries resounded as one before they sprang to their feet, positioned their aim and tugged on their bows to shoot and kill.

Only the kenten moved, filling the air with crickee!s. The two fidgeted impatiently while keeping their sights on the tresspassers.

"Mawey, mawey, mawey," Tsu'tey murmured to Itoyo and Ree'ahn at the same time that he stored away his knife and approached them calmly.

Itoyo's eyes cooled and he lowered his hands and looked at Tsu'tey for the first time, his mouth parting in an almost-question.

"Find Piral and the others and tell them to return to their posts. Txi." Tsu'tey was replied to with a fast nod from Itoyo before the warrior jogged into the forest.

Tsu'tey steel-eyed Ree'ahn and slapped down the bow that Ree'ahn refused to relax, causing Ree'ahn to hiss. Ree'ahn snatched his weapon from the ground and squinted his eyes. Tsu'tey rolled his eyes from him and turned to face the Dreamwalkers.

The Dreamwalkers helped the woman, the veterinarian head, Sky, to her feet from the dirt. While her colleagues patted her back, Sky coughed.

Tsu'tey addressed the aliens in English. "You are forbidden if Jake did not say for you to come here. No one else is allowed."

"We were just--"

"Fnu!!" Ree'ahn woofed. The Dreamwalker male jumped. "We will decide what to do with you, and then you will speak!!" Ree'ahn couldn't tell if the aliens understood him or not, but he was sure his tone was sharp enough to keep them in their place.

"You're not going to let us explain? We got lost!" Sky blurted. She looked to Tsu'tey and then the other Na'vi warrior. Even in her Avatar body, she had to lift her head to look the men in the eye.

Tsu'tey dragged his eyes over her form and he began to circle her. Sky's head followed as far as she could turn it. Her tail licked with suprise when he held the end of its shaft and felt the silk at its tip. He let her tsaheylu slip through his hand and swing limply at her legs. He returned to her front looking unimpressed at her and the rest of the three. Sky waited for whatever he might do next.

"Ree'ahn!" Tsu'tey called. His nose wrinkled like something stank. "Fwew ayfol!!"

"Yes, I am looking at them." Ree'ahn answered distastefully with dead eyes on all of the aliens just like Tsu'tey.

"How would they feel if we traded with their bodies to parade on their lands like wild animals, like we own the place?"

"Pxasik!!" Screw it!!, the Na'vi shouted with a jab of the bow in his grip. "Let us kill them and be done with it! You hold them and I will punch them until their flesh squishes between my fingers!"

Ree'ahn was so spirited that sometimes it could be amusing. Tsu'tey had to always remember to be careful when he chose to rile him. "Pey," He snickered to Ree'ahn. Wait.

The Dreamwalkers and Sky were very far from the alien village. He could let them find their way back on their own, but he didn't want Sky to be hurt. And, the air was growing heavy from a coming shower. It would be hard for the aliens to find their way in the rain if they didn't have the landmarks memorized by heart.

"You stay here and we will say what we do with you!" Tsu'tey boomed to the Dreamwalkers and to his coworker. He turned briefly with his chin in one hand and Ree'ahn's shoulder in the other.

The aliens started to murmur quickly in English behind them. Ree'ahn used both of his hands to shake Tsu'tey's crazily.

"Tsu'tey'eylan, kempe sin nga?!" He whispered hotly.

"Use your brain, skxawng! We can't kill them!"

"Why not?!"

"Do you want to give the Skypeople another reason to come after us?!"

"Fine! Then what do you want to do?!"

"We should take them to our camp until the rain passes, and guide them back." The trip would only be longer if they waited to gather direhorses, so it would be better to lead them on foot, Tsu'tey thought as he calculated something in his head. Their village wasn't far, but he wasn't sure how much the aliens could fare, so they might need something to eat first. He lifted his eyes from the ground and met Ree'ahn's pouting face. "Ree'ahn, you make them hametsi kalin like you do for our lunch."

"What the fuck?!" Ree'ahn striked Tsu'tey's chest. "I am not making sweet bread for demons!!"

They both glanced at the four Dreamwalkers watching them banter.

"I know what I am doing." Tsu'tey said calmly. He felt water stinging his skin. The rain was already falling in fat droplets. "Now, tell them and let's go." Tsu'tey walked ahead to the warriors' camp.

Ree'ahn searched and failed to find the Tsu'tey he used to know that was never so soft like the dung that came out of a baby's txim. Ree'ahn took hold of his bow. He called over his shoulder to the Dreamwalkers, "follow and keep up!!"

\---

"Ma olo'eyktan, you cannot be the bad voice. It is un-heard of." Mi'nat, the most skilled singer of all in the clan, whispered to the clan leader sitting cross legged beside her and holding her petite hand in his. 

It was another cheery day in the village and the light from outside made the space inside the olo'eyktan's coven glow yellow from the skins that covered the openings of the tree roots. Neytiri and other Omatikaya women who all sat in a circle were willing to help Jake learn their traditional songs for as long as it would take, yet there were only fifty-two verses to this one and the olo'eyktan was still having trouble.

"I promise I won't let you down. Let's do it again." Jake replied to a child, Mi'nat, who had worried, almond-shaped eyes. He cleared his throat. 

Everyone, with their eyes closed, started on the tones of their long voweled notes after Jake called out the opening to the old song. 

The music vibrated through them until Jake's note entered and shook the air. Neytiri popped one of her eyes open, noticing that most of the other women had done the same. Mi'nat showed the tight-lipped Tshaik a wince that at any moment would burst into laughter.

The chorale started to close and Jake grinned from ear-to-ear. He leaned down to Mi'nat and said to her: "I'm getting the hang of this! So... what do we sing next?" 

Min'at's chest fluttered when Jakesully squeezed her hand with his fingers and gazed at her in the feathers and trinkets that Eytukan used to wear. His eyes were alive with curiousity to learn even more about the culture that he was now apart of forever.

Min'at didn't feel as intimidated to sing with the Toruk Makto as she had been with Neytiri's father. Eytukan had a rumbling voice that used to make Min'at feel small whenever she had sang beside him. Although the best warrior, Tsu'tey, had perfect skill even in the singing arts, Jakesully's charm and handsome teeth could distract Min'at from judging him too harshly. Jakesully would only look to her if only for a few hours in practice, but Mi'nat never forgot to remain coy about it in front Neytiri. 

The markings on Mi'nat's cheeks twinkled brightly at the ground as she mustered, "Perhaps my eyktan would like to sing another holy song?"

"Yes. But first may I...uh..." Jake tossed his gaze around the circle. "...take a breather?"  
The women looked at each other to see which one knew what the new riddle meant.

"He has spoken; he will rest alone for a while until he calls you." The Tshaik stood and the singers followed her. 

They were left alone. Neytiri sat with him and gave him a bowl of water. Jake gulped it dry, dribbling it over his chin. 

"I know that look on your face, and I dont like it. Jake, what is it?"

"This is gonna be so much harder than I thought."

"But you have said it just now, you are...'getting the hang' of it? Be still." Neytiri fixed the leaf in the middle of his head. Neytiri remembered the miniscule lift of her father's lips that only she would notice when she used to do the same thing for him.

"Hell, if it's gonna to take all day for me to learn how to sing, it'll take years for me to learn everything else! What am I gonna do? And then there's the, the, the, the history... and the politics...and--maybe I'm not cut out for this!" 

His mate's hands gently pushed his cheeks together and wiggled his head. "You still make so much noise...like a bay-bee." His eyes were big like one, too. He was so cute, her Jake. She lost her smile when Jake didn't get any happier.

"I'm just a...dropout who joined the Marines because I still wanted to be somebody. And if Tommy hadn't died I wouldn't even be on this moon. Neytiri, I just feel like I don't deserve this; I don't understand why she chose me."

"You talk like you never saved our clan from the Tsawtute and God never heard your prayers. Jake, you are not the Skypeople anymore. You are Omatikaya, now, and this is where you are meant to be, for all time." Neytiri traced the dots under his eyes. "If the Great Mother believes in you, why is it so hard for you to believe in yourself?"

Some life showed in his eyes that let Neytiri know he was thinking about what she said. 

"Come. Mi'nat still has much to teach you." Her hands smoothed over the feathers that hung to his broad shoulders.


	8. THE CIRCLE OF WARRIORS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dreamwalkers follow Tsu'tey's lead through the forest.

### THE CIRCLE OF WARRIORS

* * *

A crackle rang out over the forest of the clan of the Omatikaya. Plants that twinkled in the daylight were made dull with the shadows of rainclouds that rolled in like a grey-black dust storm from Earth. Ground-critters skittered to their mounds and other insects slithered under the sog to their burrows. Lemur-like creatures, bleating like cuckoo-birds, swung branch-to-branch in arms of six in a long train to gallop back to their nests and escape the rain that started to hammer the forest from above.

The wildlife shook and teetered in the breeze of the storm, and a species of violet flora collected water until they could no more, and vomited the rest into spills on the forest floor. Tsu'tey pounced over one of the puddles in an arch and kept on to the warriors' camp with tiny squish-squish-squishes that Ree'ahn copied in front of the Dreamwalkers who plodded from behind in their boots and huffed like horses to not lose sight of the warriors.

Ree'ahn leapt to the bottom of a hill and landed with his hands between his knees to end his drop easy and light. Ree'ahn raised his eyes to the path. In a hop-jog, he followed an invisible route. Tsu'tey called in a faraway voice about someone being slower than usual. The other warrior hooted back in Na'vi and scissored his legs ahead. Behind him were four splats in the mud and strings of jarbled English.

The Avatars helped each other up from the ditch and yanked their boots free with a sqweech from a goo that used to be solid ground. They were all slathered with sludge when they saw each other again.

"Waitaminnut, waitaminnut!" said one of the men in the quartet. "Holy shit!" He panted as he rested his hands on his hips. The other Avatars took the time to catch their breaths, too.

"We'll keep up if we just stay together!" yelled Victoria, the taller female avatar, over the shower.

"I know, but...I'm not sure about this!" He remembered how one warrior looked at him as if he were going to eat him.

"If you're too scared, then go back!" Tanner grinned.

The man scoffed, but wagged his head. "Yeah, I think I will!"

The three gave him understanding smiles. "Is your GPS working?!" Sky asked.

"Yeah. Take care!" And that was it from the other driver.

"Alright, man--see you at dinner!" called Tanner.

Victoria shrugged. "It's just us three."

Tanner gasped. "Come on!!" The warrior was about to be a mile ahead of them. The women clobbered after Tanner, their lungs pumping like exhaust pipes again.

"Shoulda brought some pogosticks!" Tanner yelled.

That earned him some out-of-breath cackles in reply, but the drivers didn't have much time to talk or they'd be abandoned without an umbrella in the middle of nowhere in a deep, dark and rainy forest on a moon that was light years from Earth.

Sky stopped at something that looked familiar. Red-orange growths, with blooms larger than tractor tires, spiraled into the grey sky. They looked to be the same things that Jake had talked about in his logs to the base. Sky almost reached out to touch one, but she was grabbed by Victoria to keep on going. The driver passed on a little smile to Sky.

Soon, a noise, one like millions of old televisions on a channel with no signal, crescendoed in the Avatars' ears and the air sharpened with a smell of brine and earth. The warriors and the Avatars trotted on the shoulders of a titanic waterfall that fell nearly one-hundred-feet and pounded into a water body with crashing, white waves.

As if the Avatars weren't already soaked enough, the squalls that carried from below hurled blasts of the lake's water over them at random. Victoria squealed and struggled to keep upright. Tanner slipped like he missed a banana peel and landed on his back with a "doosh!!"

Sky and Victoria rushed to him and saw he was wheezing, though a bit painfully. The three guffawed from exhaustion, awe, ache, and disbelief at the crazy situation they suddenly found themselves in after deciding to spend a day-off to wander around in the Na'vi life forms they never had a chance to use outside of the RDA station.

"Can I have a little help here?" Tanner said. Blinded by laughter, the driver finally felt a strong hand yank him to his feet; it was a bit rougher than needed. He said "thanks," before a cold feeling froze him.

Through the dark veil of locks that draped over Ree'ahn's face, two large, gold orbs, fixed in a chilling glare, pierced through the driver. The thunder boomed and the rain pattered around them before he finally said, "we are here."

The warrior slowly crept his eyes over the others. Ree'ahn then strolled forward at his own pace and left them to themselves. Like a wet mop, his hair slapped his back with every stride away.

As Sky's dumbfounded colleague picked yellow and pink petals from his arms, the Avatars shared silent looks of surprise and of ease at knowing that they would not have to run anymore.

"I knew he could speak English." Victoria smirked. The others agreed. The three followed the warrior's steps along the falls, now in leisure. They lost the warrior somehow, but then Tsu'tey, with braids tossing from the storm, approached them and they all felt another wave of relief.

"It is not far now," Tsu'tey assured them, looking winded but not spent. Tsu'tey's face hardened and his tail oscillated when he counted the group. "Ree'ahn has lost one of you?!"

"No, one of us was just too pussy." Tanner said. Victoria gave him a look.

Tsu'tey blinked fast and tasted the word. "Puss-see?"

Sky excused the surgeon but didn't offer a translation. "It means that he was afraid to come. But don't worry, Tsu'tey, he didn't come too far."

Tsu'tey trusted his teacher's smile. "Ah. Let us hope he finds his way home." He ushered the remaining three into the trees by the shoulders of the falls.

Under the woodland's protection, the rain muffled to a buzz. The Avatars felt their clothes pasting to them like a second skin. The pacing colleagues stopped in front of a trunk as wide as two arm-spans. A long rope of woven fibers hit against it in the wind. The Avatars' eyes trailed up the rope only to see it dissolve into a haze of leaky clouds. They spotted the other warrior from before monkeying quickly to the top.

"You will climb, but first, listen," Tsu'tey said, holding onto a half-smile from the looks on their faces. The pitter-patter of the rain likened a drumroll. "This place is called the Circle of Warriors. Only the counsel is in this place. You will stay here until the rains pass. With us you will eat hametsi kalin, and then we take you back. Do not say that you know me to aytsamsiyu. If I choose, I tell them."

The Avatars looked at one another and nodded.

"Tsiltsan," Tsu'tey said. Something inside of him relaxed. "Last one. You come up here, this is our kelku." Tsu'tey tapped his chest with his four fingers. "Our house. Be respectful to all aytsamsiyu, and do not touch what does not belong to you."

Tanner said, "then that means everything, right?"

Tsu'tey looked satisfied at the healer's common sense. "Piral will be kind, but do not test her. Toyo might ask you many questions, that is his way, but his hands can be sticky, so watch your things. And, you do not need to be afraid to speak to that one," Tsu'tey said, glancing up, "but he enjoys his sleep." He warned the group with an unreadable smirk and said, "do not look down." Tsu'tey grabbed hold of the rope with his hands and tail, and he wriggled himself high above their heads in a fluid pace.

Tanner spoke when Tsu'tey was high enough. "What are we eating, again?"

"Only one way to find out," said Sky. Sky clasped the fibers. She strained to pull herself up, but ran out of wind. She crossed her ankles and started to spin in-and-out like a pinwheel. She let out a flustered shout.

"You're almost there," quipped Tanner while his and Victoria's eyes followed her body like a pendulum.

Sky stretched her feet to the ground to stop. Her breath churned and her yellow eyes surveyed the rope and tree from another angle.

Again, Sky clasped the rope and growled to pull her legs from the grass. Tanner pushed Sky forwards until she could help herself along. Eventually, they were all worming up the rope, but then their balance started to topple as the storm gained strength. The Avatars' grip slipped and they fluttered their legs in the air to find a foot-hold on the big tree. Panic erupted when they realized they were now almost as high from the ground as a skyscraper. The Avatars hollered at each mammoth push and heart-plunging pull of the rope that creaked on the tree like an old boat at sea.

Ree'ahn hopped to the summit and hauled up Tsu'tey behind him with one lean arm as he looked to the Omatikayan acres far below. The area was now splotches of dark-green and black-purple. Ree'ahn usually took a moment to sit, inhale the air and enjoy the view before crossing over to the camp because the climb was worth it. Today, it was too rainy to see or smell anything. Wind jostled the bridge that latched with wounded rope to the tree under the friends' long, blue feet.

The warriors heard screams from below that rose above the thunder like sirens.

Ree'ahn ha-ha!ed at the captors and yelled to Tsu'tey, "I think you should see about your Dreamwalkers!"

Tsu'tey showed a cheeky look. "Txi." He hit his friend's shoulders forward to get dry and rest.

Ree'ahn, with his eyes still twinkling in crescents, turned and skipped across the bridge.

After giving out a "guh!" of her own last effort, Sky's arms clawed to the top of the tree and her legs crabbed over.

"It is on the other side, karyu; move fast!" Tsu'tey said as his teacher of the sanctuary, Sky, stumbled in his hands to the start of the bridge. "Hold onto the sides if you must! But do not look down!"

Sky started to realize that not looking down may be the golden rule for the whole of Pandora. At first, her boots wobbled a few steps but she steadily gained momentum and progressed across the planks. The surgeon shuffled behind her.

Tsu'tey looked to the last one. Victoria swallowed heavily before the groaning bridge that swung left and right like a guillotine.

"I'm going to die," Victoria croaked.

That made no sense to Tsu'tey; she had just climbed all the way up there on her first try. He insisted, "you will not dye!"

Her tail thrashed with racing thoughts and her pulse roared in her ears. A shiver started from her feet to her hands and made them tremble.

Tsu'tey gestured from her to the rain. "Go now!"

The tall RDA intern jerked in a sob and shook her head.

Tsu'tey breathed with a sound that was unsure and hungry. Then, he had an idea. He squatted and told her to crawl on his back. Victoria touched her hands to her elbows around his neck and Tsu'tey squeezed her thighs and lifted her with a grunt. He tight-roped over the bridge while wobbling with her weight. A few times he stopped to balance and he jostled her to a better grip in his hands. Victoria fisted Tsu'tey's neckwear, the only thing she could hold onto, and kept her eyes glued together at the same time that water from everywhere hosed her body. All at once, she was released on a tree branch thicker than a mound that stood for solid ground, and she was gently pushed forward to reunite with everyone.

The drizzle they had all escaped blurred the view to a near-white. Everyone was blackened by the crown of the new tree where a jagged and homey structure waited before them. It was built in a fashion like images from the Avatars' guidebooks to the Omatikaya; its body morphed and twisted to the bends, valleys and crooks of the branches in the tree and it was roofed for the very worst of tropical rainstorms by its large, green leaves.

Sky, short and blue and slathered with muck and with dregs of hair over her face like long, black slugs, slapped the palms of Victoria with both hands and showed her canines in an enormous grin. Tanner, worse for wear with dark marks over his arms and his brown clothes sagging from him where they were slit, slapped everyone's hands in the air and added a gutty roar to the womens' cheers. They had finally made it.

Tsu'tey swirled from his place to see the male touching his knees to his chest in the rain and the females hugging and bouncing together. For their safety, he beckoned them to stop and to follow him in the kelku.

"Za'u. It will be warm inside," Tsu'tey promised.


	9. SWEET BREAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piral and Itoyo are introduced, and the story begins of how Tsu'tey met his Dreamwalker friends.

### SWEET BREAD

  


* * *

In the dim-lit Circle of Warriors, two long weapons smacked between a male Na'vi, Itoyo, and a female Na'vi, Piral. Piral makes a grimace of wrath and swoops her stick over Itoyo's head. It whistles over his skull from the left and then from the right. When Piral raises her arms and brings the stick down between his eyes, Itoyo's weapon meets it first with a dunk!

The weapons crucifix and then they start to splinter as the warriors both dig their bare heels into the wooden ledge under their feet and resist.

Itoyo grits, sputters, and launches Piral away in a shout.

Piral's long, blue legs, encased in rain-sodden guards over their shins, both shuffled. Her arms that were protected by similar sleeves of hard, woven reeds, lead to two long-fingered hands, one that flexes craftily on the fat cylinder of sanded wood in her left palm and another that wrings the hilt of the club that was carefully ridged to the shape of her hold and made smooth with a tree resin. Her waistguard, crafted in the same material of her limbs, stretched with her torso as she bent low before Itoyo. Her small breasts were gathered beneath gnarled roots that wound into a stem between her ribs and spooled around her neck. Between pale lips, Piral revealed her fangs and her white teeth; her nose widened when her portly cheeks pulled them up to grin. Her eyes, poised under strong brows and blinking with thin lashes, burned a topaz color before Itoyo. Her boyish, ear-length plaits swung when she thrusted towards Itoyo, and the shells at her ends clattered like marbles.

Itoyo, who had a slender face and thin eyes, a band around his neck of internetted circles, and tan adornments at the tips of his shoulder-length braids, hesitated and moved his tail like a flog. Piral wiggled her own tail, making a sound behind her lips like tiny bells.

Itoyo lunged at her. Piral's growls, sounding throaty and triumphant, cried out with every blow Itoyo swung to send her from the ledge. She jumped and sailed to the bottom of the house, heard steps pounding after her, and battered Itoyo's hits from the ground. Her wrist flicked. Her weapon now underhand, she speared its end into Itoyo's stomach.

Itoyo hissed and pedaled backward. Piral sprung to her feet. Their clubs whacked on.

With two hands around his club's hilt and a ready to bat the smile from Piral's face, Itoyo suddenly felt weightless. A large circle of glowing stones with flames licking underneath them sped towards him and his arms grapple the air uselessly as he yelped.

"Guck-!"

His body hurled forward in Piral's iron grip. "Irayo," he breathed in relief.

Piral made a girly snarl and raised her weapon again.

Itoyo looked to the steaming pillows of batter rising into fat eggs over the fire in the middle of the house. "Hametsi kalin?"

Piral's eyes glittered at the name of her favorite food. She lowered the club and rushed close. "Tsiltsan!"

"Ah, Ree'ahn'tsyip." Oh, little Ree'ahn. "Fwew, Piral; he has made too much."

Piral did look, but saw nothing wrong at all. "You are complaining?"

"It is wasteful! Food is already scarce in these hard times."

"Then, I will eat it all myself!"

"Your stomach is a pit."

They watched the hametsi singe and smelled a flowery scent waft to their noses. They pictured how the bread would sponge in their hands when it was baked and how the hot nectar inside would ooze in their mouths and crystallize on their fingers that they would suck clean.

A faint voice gave a greeting.

"Nang!" Piral gasped. Her eyes bugged out at Itoyo like a prolemuris. Itoyo's braids twirled after her.

They dogtrotted up to the armoury to hide the weapons they weren't allowed to use inside. The two snickered during their fast descent to greet their tsamsiyu'eyktan.

Suddenly, the warriors statued. They peered below to see three Na'vi bending inside in the kelku from the storm. They wore battered cloths of the Skypeople and fat shoes over their feet. Itoyo's dark hand planted over Piral's waistguard and kept her behind him on the ledge. His face dipped into the orange light of the fire below and his eyes bent when he recalled the faces of the captures that he and Ree'ahn had found tresspassing to the clan.

Tsu'tey told the vagabonds to sit. He crossed his legs on the floor of warm, dried grasses and the captures followed, making crackling noises as they shifted. Tsu'tey muttered in English to the new group and nodded at each of them to be sure they were comfortable.

Piral and Itoyo look warily at the aliens and faced each other. They slithered into Ree'ahn's coven at the highest corner of the house.

Itoyo whispered first, "Ree'ahn! There are Dreamwalkers here!"

"Ree'ahn'tsyip!" Piral tried. She blinked slow.

Tsu'tey called nicely from far below. "Piral, Toyo? Where are you? Come and eat."

Piral eventually moved to the call of her stomach.

Itoyo clenched her bicep and kept her close. "Who are these people you have brought here to us?" he questioned in a loud, slow and guarded cadence of syllables in Na'vi. "This is a private place."

The fire simmered and the three Avatars watched Tsu'tey think to himself. Tsu'tey lifted his head and said to the dark, "I work with them in the village of the aliens. Come and eat, and I will explain."

Even on other planets, food had the power to turn complete strangers into acquantinces. The Avatars found that the plump and oval baguettes, marshmellow-white and about the size of two human hands in their laps, spider-webbed like cotton candy when they pinched it apart. The three pulled pieces to their mouths in the same way as the Omatikayan warriors. Tsu'tey reached the middle of his loaf, scooped out a wobbly, gellacious morsel that was clear-colored, and sunk his fingers between his lips.

Victoria followed Tsu'tey's action. It would keep her clothes clean and keep away more black insects that jumped between the blades of grasses in the floor of the house. She investigated the clump of nectar on her blue fingers and then ate it. It was sweeter than maple syrup with caramel, yet another memory of cumcumber came to her mind. The taste was different, but it didn't stop her from spooning out more of the jelly.

While the others chattered, Piral stood and took a portion of sweet bread. She shouted to the silent Dreamwalker, "you! Come!"

Victoria pointed at herself and followed the bright-toothed warrior.

Piral pulled her legs over a ledge and manuevered through the tunnel of the giant treetop until the mealfire in the center of her friends was a candle flame. She had miraculously kept the loaf in her hands for the whole climb. When Victoria spotted Piral again, her blue foot bounced into a space. Victoria hesitated, but then she lowered her head under a bough and did the same.

The large berth, floored and walled with a hardened material like debris, was colored auburn from a personal fire. Piral plopped the loaf by a mysterious clutter on a ridge.

Piral murmured to Victoria, "you are quiet, and he is quiet. Here it is more good for you!" Victoria didn't have time to comment that no one was there. The female warrior beamed and left her giggles behind she.

Steadily, Victoria blinked in the dark. She saw an article, evidently a huge one, with bulbous loops and twists of a material she didn't recognize, hang in folds before her eyes. With time, hues entered in view: blues, reds, yellows, and greens. Victoria reversed, slow, and a symmetry unveiled itself in a colossal graphic. If she brought a flashlight, she could see what the shapes morphed into as a whole. Her eyes traced along the embroidery; its other end was unfinished.

Victoria dipped her head to a sizeable collection of miniature, barrel-shaped wooden blocks. Her head leaned. The dimness of the room made it impossible to see the figures that were brought forth by the etchings in the totems. She reached to hold one and bring it close.

A glint made Victoria flinch as if she were burned.

A knifehandle pinned on the ridge where her fingers would have been. The sound it made was as loud as the thump of her heart. Victoria's body wheeled around, but met darkness.

Her golden eyes, amber in the coven, inched up to the ceiling and found the third warrior. His tail laid limp on a high outgrowth that nestled him to the corner of the house. An opening in the branches, shaped as a large eye and filled with grey, dripping sky, was where he chose to curl his head.

The Na'vi's hair shuffled away in threads from his face as he slowly rose. His eyes opened in slits.

The same feelings that had rushed down Victoria's spine from the falls came again: electric chills of terror.

"Oe takip aytaftxuyu, si ayrelseotu," he said in his tenor voice, awakened and gravelly.

I am from among a family of weavers, and artists. Victoria mentally translated. That explained quite a lot.

She couldn't remember how to say something was beautiful in Na'vi, but she tried her best to give him an answer. After all, Tsu'tey had said it was safe to speak with him.

"Silt sawn," Victoria tries with a crooked smile and a hand-movement to the whole display.

The Na'vi regarded the compliment with a scowl, and then he released a long breath before he descended and closed his eyes once more.

Victoria turned back to the art. With her heart in her mouth, she said, "what are you called?"

A quiet that was longer than she expected followed. He answered, "wrey-aghn."

For a while, she believed his name would be the last thing she would hear from him. Then, he added sleepily, "if I see your hand on my things again, you will lose it."

Okay, Victoria mouthed to herself. He hadn't stopped her from looking, so she observed more of his handiworks from afar.

Tsu'tey had produced a gourd-looking object with a long spout, but had not picked it up until now. He drank from it and passed it along to the warriors. Piral, once Itoyo had his share, downed the drink in deep gulps and voiced her satisfaction in a rasp. She rounded the container to Tanner.

Tanner trusted one of the rules he lived by: if the food in the place was delicious, then so was everything else. And, Tsu'tey had made the most of his fill from whatever it was. Tanner gripped the belly of the thing, and then tilted it to his lips.

Tanner heard the liquid sizzle when it went down his throat and he hacked and barked out air.

The warriors had waited for it. Tsu'tey's laugh sounded dark and baleful against Piral's clucking that favored a witch. Itoyo's soft chortle went unnoticed, and so did the gleam in his eye when he became interested in a glinting and swishing jewel on a female Dreamwalker's ear. Itoyo leaned to Tsu'tey and moved his lips. Tsu'tey's ears perked. Itoyo rambled on in endless fragments, long or short, that always curled in a question.

Tsu'tey waved him silent. He turned to the Avatars who looked puzzled at every other word that rolled too fast from Itoyo's tongue. "He wants to know how I meet all of you."

Tanner grunted. He swallowed the last of his meal and invited himself to share first, "It's a long story..."


	10. A LONG STORY: TSU'TEY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened after Tsu'tey fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for the kudos. I appreciate it.

### A LONG STORY: TSU'TEY 

* * *

Tsu'tey bid his ikran a farewell if they did not ever meet again in the same life.

Unyu yowled, and her great wings dived.

As his gravity sunk, Tsu'tey started. He pumped his legs towards the alien ship in the wind that felt like an ocean.

Pop! Pop-pop-puttaputtaputta-pop!

The stutters of the Skypeople's killing machines and wails of death all silenced. Left was the fading call of Unyu and the air Tsu'tey sucked between his teeth.

In one breath, his bow and arrow assembled in his hands; now, the movements of his muscles that he had rehearsed from childhood were no longer actions but thoughts. His legs leapt.

Aim.

He yanked on the string; it creaked; his finger bowed to the shank of an arrowhead; he fixed it at an alien with a grotesque, flabby face.

Shoot.

His lungs emptied in a cry. Tsutey's right hand released and he could watch what happened in milliseconds. The arrow zapped; the alien's eyes bulged and its mouth stretched to an uncanny length like a snake; the arrow flew into its heart and the alien's legs floated above its head. Metal rushed between Tsu'tey's eyes and he tumbled limbs-over-shoulders onto the UFO.

Kill.

He clawed any alien his eye met first and flung them into the sky. Bright flashes erupted from everywhere. Tsu'tey struck another with his bow with so much power that a gritty rumble heaved from his soul. He squeezed another's throat and hurled it overboard to its death.

A last alien darted before him. Its lips peeled back and it screeched. Tsu'tey planted his feet and snatched his knife. He would slice that one's head; he wanted to see its blood paint the walls.

White, flickering lights blinded him. At the same time, a force like nothing from his realm collided with his middle and all of the air flew from his mouth.

There was no sound.

Tsu'tey tumbled in his breath.

A kaleidoscope of blue and green was his vision. He saw his own limbs in flashes.

He couldn't sense which way was up; he was sure he was now falling sideways. He accelerated.

At his horror, he saw his own face.

A shrill sound drilled between Tsu'tey's ears when the world was still. He heard himself breathing from miles away. Tsu'tey moved his hand. It peeled from his middle and felt soaked and sticky. Trembling, each red digit bent. As his hand floated away from him, he glanced under his nose. His legs were there, but looking at them made him feel uneasy, like they were forbidden to see. Tsu'tey tried a slight lift of his legs-it brought an agony that was indescribable. Tsu'tey squeezed his teeth until he was light headed. He was finally freed from it, and then he fainted.

Tsu'tey's life ticketed by in frames. He saw his birth; he saw his mother's eyes twinkling at him with a feeling of love that was magnified to suffocate him in the dreamspace; he tumbled with a little Ree'ahn in the forest and he heard Ree'ahn squeal and guggle as their blue tails, legs, and arms tumbled down a hill; he witnessed Unyu for the first time as a young hunter and she followed his head in rage as his teacher's voice rang from far behind for Tsu'tey to take courage; he felt his father's fingers, cold and wet, trace paint over him with a smile that suited his weathered face. He saw the great Eytukan, with sunken, golden eyes like a noble creature, speak to him and lay his hands on his shoulders. He saw his enchanted mother, a head below him then, do the same to his right.

In slow-motion, memories reemerged from the happiest day of his life when he swore to tsaheylu and protect Neytiri until he took his very last breath. He saw flowers flutter in technicolor to his marriage bed, he felt the ground churning in waves, he felt Neytiri's warmth swaddled around him like a wet blanket, and he heard his breath shudder and thin to a supernatural feeling.

Then, in a nauseating speed, he watched the threads of his life unravel. Neytiri's eyes glowed red as she shrieked at him in front of an army of Na'vi-a direhorse, on fire, galloped in a smoky forest-an alien's mouth grew to the size of God, stretched over Pandora, and the whole forest silthered down its throat-his vision flickered fast to white-there was no sound-Tsu'tey staggered backwards with feet that felt giant-the universe struck him dead.

A blackness appeared that was so dark, Tsu'tey tasted it. It felt like it flowed in rivulets into his mouth and out from his fingers. It was an ink-black void with a white tunnel, like a moon, that pulsed in its center and reeked of metal and burnt grass. Tsu'tey could will his being to lean away from its stench, but no matter how far he ventured from the tunnel, he could see its light fade in and dissolve from any corner of his eyes.

Soon, his consciousness shifted. Tsu'tey never experienced that happening before, yet he was sure it did happen. The first sound that came to him was a droning beep, beep, beep. Orbs of white and blue floated from above.

One gentle beam descended through his eye. It feathered to the left, to the right, down below, up high, to the left, and to the center again.

"That's it, big guy," whispered a voice. "come on back."

The beam started to play. It punnied in a pinwheel. It zimmied in a zig-zag. It came so close, Tsu'tey could feel its angelic warmth. Then, it zoomed far away, and Tsu'tey felt his throat tighten as if he were going to cry. A click-it disappeared. Tsu'tey heard gibberish growing in volume on all sides of his head and in his foot.

The orbs above him gelled to create a crowd of oblong shapes. Tsu'tey's vision had not sharpened much more than that. He had lost the orbs to the void that had blanketed Tsu'tey again. Slowly, the white tunnel had made its presence, and it had glowed and faded for years.


	11. A LONG STORY: TANNER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened after Tsu'tey fell (continued), and Victoria is threatened by Ree'ahn.

A LONG STORY: TANNER  
\------

"You were out cold," said Tanner in the quiet circle around the fire. "That was one of the worst comas I've ever seen. What did you see?" He peeked at Tsu'tey and saw that the Na'vi's eyes were glazed. 

Tsu'tey focused to the Avatar. He looked and saw his warriors and guests staring at him and waiting.

"I saw too many things. It made me not the same." Tsu'tey said. "Everywhere now I find happiness, and peace. The forest has more colors than in the past, and I stop on walks to watch the animals playing from time to time." He bows with a smirk when Piral mumbled in disbelief. He goes on, "I can hear the Creator speak clear. And, I am not so angry about things that do not matter."

Sky saw Itoyo give Tsu'tey a look.

"I am not always so angry on things that do not matter."

"Anyway," Tanner said. Tanner carried on to explain that his voice had been Tsu'tey's thread to the outside world. Eventually, Tsu'tey had woken up.

The white tunnel dissolved again, but never stretched to its moon-shape. The smell of grass and embers evaporated. The void faded. Tsu'tey felt lucid. He moved to see his legs in the forest. They looked normal, but long insects with too many legs were stuck to them. Tsu'tey's made a face and he moved to pluck them away.

"Woah, woah--hey!!" A hand that was too small to be real stung his hand like a tiny bug. "Leave those in, okay?"

The grasses were gone. Eerie objects of silver, blue and white were all around Tsu'tey. The all-white dwarf-being Tsu'tey looked down to had a mirror for a face. He frowned. It was an alien.

The alien flinched from a big tail that whizzed over his head. He kept his hands over his face like a shield, and then peeked.

Tsu'tey felt his neck and chest---they were bare. He saw he wore nothing but a white sheet. He saw something black and feathery tumble over his shoulders as he leaned over. He gripped his head--unraveled and unproper like Ree'ahn. Tsu'tey's eyes became glass balls. He felt completely naked. 

"Alright, take it easy." A grainy voice, or an astronaut underwater, buzzed. "Everything is in a safe place." 

It thought now was a good time to introduce himself properly. "Good morning, Tsu'tey. I am Mr. Tanner Martinez-Brown, and I will be happy to be your surgeon. You can call me Tanner or, "Mister T". Alrighty.

" So, last month. You fell. One mile to the ground. You were shot, your legs were shattered, your skull was fractured, you had a concussion, and, uh..." Tanner paused to remember, and air pressurizes and depressurizes in his mask. He couldn't think at the same time that the ten-foot-tall, blue monument glared down at him like a lion. "...all I can say is, there is a God. So, ha-ha--here's what you can eat for breakfast today. Do you want jellow or ahpuhlsahce?"

Tsu'tey had pounced at the alien with a roar. 

Tanner went on to say: as more time had passed, he and Tsu'tey had soon started talking like two army buddies at a barbecue.

One day, the time had finally come when Tsu'tey was strong enough to have his first invasive surgery. Minutes before it was to take place, Tanner had chatted with Tsu'tey about women while Tanner had cleaned his tools.

"So, that means you're divorced, then?" said Tsu'tey's surgeon.

If that was the term for it, Tsu'tey agreed and he gave the little alien a nod of his chin. 

"Do you miss being married?"

"At times, yes."

Now Tanner was curious. "Why?"

Tsu'tey made an embarrased sound. 

"Oh-hoh-hoh, I see!"

"That is not whye." Tsu'tey said with irritation. He explained why he really missed being married. "Then, I did not sleep alone."

Tanner then wondered aloud about why Tsu'tey didn't just remarry; he was almost overqualified for women.

"Our ways are not so simple." Tsu'tey said. Once an Omatikayan passed an age without a tsaheylu, he or she no longer have their own choice of a mate and would have to consult the matchmaker for a suitable pairing that would contribute to the clan. Tsu'tey was too heartbroken from Neytiri to follow the tradition so soon. 

Tanner liked to keep his patients in a good mood before they went under. But now, Tsu'tey had to countdown. He asked the Na'vi what his titles were again and motioned to the anesthesiologist.

Tsu'tey felt scorched from his shoulders to his fingers. "Karyu'eyktan," Tsu'tey paused and remembered to translate so the alien would not forget the next time. "that is lead teacher." His lips started to buzz. "Tsampongu'eyktan. That is leader of war party." His heart began to race. "Tsamsiyu...eyktan...that one is...." Tsu'tey's tongue lapped against his fangs in a jumbled mess of nonsense and Na'vi. Everything blobbed and blackened. His pupils lolled backwards and drool stretched from his mouth.

Tanner glanced at Tsu'tey. His lips bowed and he called in the others.

The room was black and a single light shined overhead the patient. A loud, curt sound clicked steadily. Like petals on a daisy, six masked heads in full-seamed scrubs surrounded the Na'vi.

Mr. Martinez-Brown grrred. He whimsydoodled a tool behind him and his snow-white fingers flapped for a bigger one. A coworker fished it over to him. 

Tanner, frustrated, gave up. He bounced the tool on the floor and dove in a glove.

The surgeons watched while Tanner sutchered between pink and yellow flesh. Then, one coworker wiggled his hands over the Na'vi's body. A flurry of white hands flapped over the body like geese.

Tanner swacked all of the hands from his patient. He squared up at every last one of them with shaking fists. The surgeons shrank and teetered their mirror-heads. Tanner's arms cut the air for everyone to calm--the fuck--down!

Tanner reoriented himself before he had a hearttack of his own from the stressful procedure.

Now, he could see. Tanner prodded carefully under the very obvious main artery.

Tanner's heart leapt in his mouth. Pale fluid pooled and spilled over the table. Tanner yanked his hands away and watched the pus cloud all of his progress. One rushed for a hemostatic and the medics regained control of the infection.

Tanner made more squishes through smegma with his first tool. Finally, the instrument clinked. Tanner's arms sunrised. He held a final bullet in the air, and then he and the others shook their fists like they all won the lottery.

Tsu'tey blinked. He finished his sentence, "tsamsiyu'eyktan--that is leader of warriors!"

"You're all done, big guy," laughed a faraway voice. 

Tsu'tey saw his healer and another alien squeaking the floor with blinking sticks. 

Tsu'tey had been flabbergasted. He had grazed his chest and he had felt hard ridges under his fingers in the pattern that once had lined his leg. It had been sorcery. "Vrrtep," Demon, Tsu'tey had lipsed.

Tanner and Tsu'tey smiled at each other in the kelku.

In the highest corner of the Circle of Warriors, Ree'ahn grumbled at the rain that still fell and trapped him in his peaceful coven with a stalk-woman.

Victoria, with her hands behind her back, was lost in one of his hanging pieces. It had carefully-knotted twists in a shape that she was sure that served a purpose. Maybe a net of some kind. That one was finished; it didn't have any colors on it.

Victoria heard a big frog plop behind her. She peeked, over a shoulder, at soft noises. 

Like a dream, the Na'vi warrior stripped sleeves from his legs and unraveled ties to his waistguard. He pulled guards from both arms. He was left in a loincloth and ropes around his neck. He sifted his hair and he sighed. 

Victoria turned to the wall. Victoria saw his tsaheylu swish from the room. 

When Wrey-aghn was out of sight, Victoria plucked a totem and scampered to the fire--the totem was a blocky and detailed face with a heavenly smile and an all-seeing stare--her hands burned; Victoria wheeled the totem between her fingers and thought of her guidebook--she just couldn't think of what it coud be fast enough! 

She heard tree limbs moaning and she dashed to put it back. Victoria had her hands behind her and her chin to her chest when Ree'ahn walked back in.

Ree'ahn inhaled. One big, fat, smelly rat had just died. Ree'ahn's gold eyes were snowglobes. Victoria's glimmering facemarks betrayed her without her even knowing.

Victoria felt arms shove her aside; she almost tripped.

Ree'ahn scanned his treasurers like chess pieces. He slammed two totems in the correct order that they always have been for his five terms on the warriors' counsel.

Victoria didn't know how much she appreciated both of her hands until then. 

As Ree'ahn rotated her way, the firelight made his eyes blaze and casted shadows on his green face with glittering speckles. "You are tall, Dreamwalker; that is good for that you look me in eye. You be happy I let you go... this one time again. You know that you all can be said to go away from kelku, if one of you chooses to buh-rake thee rue-welles." Ree'ahn's voice curdled. 

Victoria gulped.


	12. A LONG STORY: SKY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria and Ree'ahn conversate in the Circle of Warriors, and Sky is asked to explain how she and Tsu'tey met.

A LONG STORY: SKY

\---

The woman was very irritating, but Ree'ahn was too tired to make her leave.

His thin fingers skittered over his knives like a piano. Ree'ahn grasped the right-sized blade to finish a totem while he waited for the rain to end. He squared beside his warm fire and twirled to where he last ended on the wood. The rain made soft music to his ears and his mind fell quiet until he could imagine the demon was gone. Then, she whined:

"It's really, really dark."

Ree'ahn made a face at his ruined concentration and sighed, "aytswatute." Ree'ahn yanked the large article Victoria had first seen. The coven flooded with blue-grey light and wet air from a huge opening.

The warrior folded the drapes impatiently, stored them in a dry place, and then sat again. The rain was now a loud splatter in his ears, but it made a different music that energized him. Ree'ahn's eyes blinked in peace.

That's better, thought Victoria. Now, she could see more shapes and colors on his items. Oh, she noted. "Your knife is still stuck."

Long scrapes and frenzied scruffs answered her.

Victoria took notice of a halo of shaved and coiled branches. It had some bright flowers weaved to into it. The crown couldn't be his own-not in a million years. It had to be for someone else. Victoria's fingers felt a velvety-looking petal and imagined who it could be for.

She gasped at herself.

Ree'ahn left his things and called like a goblin for Tsu'tey.

Tsu'tey answered in a voice of irritation.

Ree'ahn started his tirade. He pistoned and threw his arms to the woman like Tsu'tey was right there in front of him.

Victoria, who twisted her hair from behind, could almost see smoke coming from the warrior's ears. When he was finally done, Ree'ahn fought for breath.

Tsu'tey's voice was indifferent when he called, "please remember to be respectful, Victoria. You will not have to leave."

Ree'ahn growled. Voices bubbled peacefully from below.

Ree'ahn took the crown and horseshoed it to a branch where the woman couldn't reach. "You will sit by me where I see you!" Ree'ahn bulldozed the Dreamwalker away from his artworks.

Victoria observed the giant, blue frog with a snakey tail and sleepy eyes. He squatted in an invisible bubble with three hollowed blocks of paints.

By the stormlight, Ree'ahn's Na'vi features, a resolute nose and chin and big eyes, looked boyish. Ree'ahn held his piece and eyed it like a scientist to a specimen. He swirled red paint on the totem's surface with a stone flint. He stilled with a new perspective.

Victoria couldn't see much when he leaned too far and his hair swept over the totem like a curtain. Then, Ree'ahn surfaced with clarity. The flint was now yellow.

While tendons rippled under his hands, wet bands of yellow curled around the etchings in the block. His hand stopped. Victoria concentrated hard for what would come next.

"You are making me afraid."

Victoria watched the rain and hugged her knees tighter. She could see the RDA base in a near distance.

Satisfied, Ree'ahn resumed. Ree'ahn preferred his privacy, but since he was waiting, he would pass the time. He painted and spoke.

"That one that you saw... it is for my tsmuke'tsyip. She is called Mi'nat. It will be for last rites. Women will show gift in front of Omatikaya and wear crown on head. Mi'nat...she will sing. After then, she will be a woman. A very...tiny woman."

Ree'ahn's sleepy English sent shivers through Victoria. His many pauses to think sounded snake-like, and, as in his own tongue, every "r" purred in Victoria's ears.

Victoria magnified Ree'ahn's smile and chewed her lip. His cyan lips peeked white teeth, and then they closed, stretched upwards, and then waned in concentration.

"What I really want to do to for it...I need other things. But, they are hard to find. Mi'nat and I work at place for Omatikaya to give and take things-I do not know English for that-and I hope to find what Ineed soon. With...a good offer."

Before he went on, Victoria whispered, "a trading post."

"What you demons call it, it does not matter." Ree'ahn frowned and continued to paint. "Our mother and father gave the place for us to carry on legacy of family. I work for here...I work for family; I am always so tired..." Ree'ahn felt like falling over right then. Reeahn's eyes became cold. He shifted. "The only place I can get those things for Mi'nat will be in reef clan-three days by water or less. But, I do not like them." Ree'ahn recalled one greedy trader of the reefs that he held to a grudge. "Hmmm. They do such...hard business," Ree'ahn purled.

Victoria felt tipsy. She listened to the Na'vi's voice like she was sipping a dark wine.

Below, Piral gobbled and wagged her hand at the other female. Itoyo admired Sky's jewel again and planned how he would steal it.

"Yes?" piped Sky.

Tsu'tey explained, "Piral asks you to now say how you meet me. Do not use riddles; Piral and Itoyo do not understand as much English."

The groups' eyes balled to Sky. Tsu'tey's voice dribbled under her own as Sky spoke.

Sky started from the day that the restoration of Pandora had began in a all-department briefing. She, the older sister to Maxpatel, had sat in the front row of a noisy room of RDA staff. She had watched Parker Selfridge, the CEO, flap his hands around like a bird in a human-cage of his bigwigs on the base.

Parker did the same fidgets as when Sky would be on the wining side of an argument: a scrub in his hair, a purse of his lips, a triple-blink, a seesaw of his penny-bright shoes, a grunt to clear his throat, a flex of his shoulders to make himself taller.

His address after the devastating war was supposed to be at 0800 hours sharp. Now it was 0859. Sky tapped her shoe and made waves in her long, multicolored skirt that she couldn't leave home. Her arms folded over a tanktop. Between her wavy, black hair, her deep-brown face moved idly from the bigwigs to the clock to the audience, who now all had ameobaed into groups to complain about getting up early. Sky's eyes, both big with dark pupils, blinked at the empty stage.

The stranger next to her also sighed. She and he glanced at each other.

The man looked deadly to a lanky, round-faced Asian girl on his other side, and the girl's lips thinned in empathy.

The man crossed his arms over themselves and extended his hands to both women. "I'm Tanner."

The Asian woman sunk her shoulders in a shy laugh and clenched the man's hand.

"Victoria."

"Sky Patel," said Sky. She clapped his hand and brightened easily at Tanner's medium brown face with laughing-wrinkles and long teeth. The top of Tanner's head was cleared in a buzzcut that was growing back. A dogtag whirled from his neck as he shook the hands of his fellow breakfast-starved comrades of the audience.

Now that the three weren't strangers anymore, Tanner had some questions.

"Where are you from, hippie-lady?" Tanner said to his left.

"India."

"Yeah, you sure sound like it. I'm from L.A. What do you even do?"

"I'm a veterinarian in the Avatar program for extra-terrestials. I didn't get to do much but research," said Sky. She almost wanted to call him a Jarhead so they were even.

"Hey, you're in my department! Have you used your Avatar?!"

"No."

"Me neither! Hmph."

"How are you doing, since, you know, all of that."

"Oh. I'm not really a soldier. I'm a field surgeon. But we have to train like soldiers, and look like 'em, too." He let Sky hold and read his dogtag.

Victoria nodded to herself and thought that made sense. She felt herself being softly nudged with Tanner's elbow.

"Where are you from? China? Japan?"

"Nigeria."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Cool. What do you do?" Tanner said. Only rookies still wore the company's unisex jumpsuit.

"I was just an intern." Victoria nodded quickly.

"Where?" Sky leaned over to ask.

"The Avatar program."

Tanner and Sky's laugh rang together. Tanner asked the inevitable: "Have you used your Avatar yet?"

Victoria's head shook.

"This program is a joke," laughed Tanner.

Sky agreed with a shake of her own head. Sky looked to Parker again. A bigwig in the circle had Parker close to her ear. The person patted him on the back and moved with the other empty suits to sit in chairs.

Sky watched Parker cross her way with a panel-thin device and their eyes met. His hair was gelled in spikes and his tuxedo looked expensive. He trots onto the stage.

"Here he comes." Tanner cheesed.

In front of twelve-hundred on and offsite staff and hundreds-of-thousands of investors watching from Earth, Parker's shoes stutter on air.

Tanner wheezed like a teakettle. Victoria pressed her lips and squeezed her eyes, but a "ptee!" blurts out anyway. Sky squirmed when she heard the whole room laughing.

Silence settled in the mass briefing room. The CEO's throat juggles. On the podium, his device shows the words he should start to speak anytime now. This was supposed to be the easy part to the rebuild after the war, but now Parker feels light and it's too quiet, and there's too many eyes on him and fingers drumming. He remembers he forgot to floss, and he sees the bigwigs starting to murmur. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He pulled it down, and an slimy echo reverberates through the room from the micro-speaker on him. The room leaned, and Parker's shiny, black shoe jerked back. His eyebrows tensed. He chuckled. Parker started to read. He finished with a somber, "wafflecoffee." He swiped on to the next page.

"Oh no," Tanner's mouth moves; he saw those frosty-eyes too many times before.

In slow motion, Sky throws her skirt over the stage. Men in black, on the wings, hesitate and then run. Metal screeches.

The room flips over and Parker tastes wax.

-"Lock the door," Parker rasped to the person rushing in his office as he rocked with breath in a shadowy corner.

Sky embraced Parker from behind to ground him from his panic-attack. His hands crushed hers on his stomach.

After a while, Parker made a sound like he birthed an elephant.

"I told you not to skip breakfast today," whispered Sky.

Parker's cheeks rose from behind and he laughed ruefully. "You don't get it! It's not like I can find a vegetable crate on the ground, stand on it and ring a bell about this! The speech had to be perfect-even if it took all night! I've already fucked up everything else!"

Sky thought Parker was a coward for letting this happen to Pandora. "You really did."

"I deserve that, I guess. Jesus. What am I supposed to say to these people?!"

"Parker. In one more minute, you're going to get back out there, stand on that stage and take control. Quaritch isn't here anymore. You are the CEO, and you make them give you respect."

Steadily, Parker rose. He and Sky looked at each other. Parker saw Sky's fiery will to build him up, and Sky saw Parker's resolve. The man that climbed the corporate ladder from underground, and the person that gave Sky butterflies whenever he swaggered into a room, returned when Parker straightened his clothes and smirked.

Parker touched his engagement gift that dangled from Sky's ear, a custom-made earring with real gold. His hands held Sky's face tenderly.

Parker huffed through his nose. "When we get back to Earth, I'm going on a long ass vacation. I don't care how much it costs. I'll go somewhere with a clean beach, and real palm trees. And you will drop everything and you are coming with me," Parker said. He hugged her.

Sky sighed from exhaustion at the scale of destruction they all now had to repair on Pandora because of what Parker had done. "I love you, Parker," said Sky. But I don't like you, she thought.

After a low-profiled speech that described the specific tasks of each department, Parker yelled at everyone to move their asses.

Sky and her two new acquantices had rose together to give him a standing ovation by themselves. The crowd had followed and had cheered and whistled. Then, the three had made plans to meet for breakfast and get to know each other better.

"You are taking too long, teacher." Sighed Tsu'tey. He did not care who Parker Selfridge was.

"I got sidetracked," Sky replied. She finally identified the day when she first saw Tsu'tey.

Meanwhile, Ree'ahn was doing all of the talking in his coven.

Victoria had listened for so long to tales of Ree'ahn's culture that she was drunk with the storm by her ears, sounds of stone dragging on wood, the smell of his paints, the hot, sweet, smoke from his fire that ribboned under her nose.

"And so now we...look now for new Hometree." Ree'ahn's eyelids felt heavy and he wished he was dreaming in his corner, yet he didn't want to ever let the demon out of his sights again. His face hardened in will. The totem in Ree'ahn's hands was now being ornamented with fine-lined shapes.

"It all could've been avoided." said Victoria.

"If Jakesewly never came to Omatikaya." Ree'ahn drawled with bitterness.

"No, if everyone moved when Jake and Grace told them to."

Ree'ahn finished a shape in confusion.

"We were trying to be peaceful. No one wanted the war to happen, but, you can't say that we are the only reason that it did. That's not fair."

Victoria felt uncomfortable that time when Ree'ahn looked her way in a strange humor. "Say to me, what that is not fair."

Victoria ruined the feeling of comfort that she believed was there in his room. She felt dizzy, sober.

Ree'ahn smelled her fear. "I do not see how fair it is that our body is your toy to play games, and lie and take-and kill!" Ree'ahn goes away from the girl and puts his items away. He had spoken to her so long; he had believed she was listening to what he had said. Ree'ahn wanted her out, now before his anger exploded.

Itoyo, Piral, Tsu'tey and Tanner listened to Sky describe a deserted and sunny hallway on the RDA base.

Sky walked to her office at the far back of the base just before the large fields, gardens, courts, and barracks of the Avatar drivers. From behind, in a ratted button up and dark pants, Dr. Norm Spellman, the star anthropologist on the base and the name everyone now knows, jogged to catch a woman in a rippling skirt and called out to her. They greeted cheerfully.

Sky heard Norm beside her. "You didn't have to run."

"Yeah, I did. I had to catch up before I lost you!"

They mosey down a hall of windows that flashed bright daylight on them at every other moment.

Norm said, "I can't make it to the sanctuary tomorrow. Can you cover it for me? There's a lot more packing to be done in the lab and they need my help."

"Okay, whatever."

"Maybe you can also...take it over, from here on out?" Norm's face looked like its long and nerdy self when it smiled down to Sky's excited face.

"I just have a few changes we should make, hopefully right away," Sky said. Her ear piercings jingled when she lugged Norm forward to a window that overlooks the sanctuary past the driver barracks. "We need more volunteers, and we need some Jarheads to build some fences for the direhorses, and someone needs to cut the grass a little; you see how bored they all are? We should add an obstacle course or they'll all go mad walking in circles like that-" Sky shifts her head at a tall, blue being trotting in the window's view on a direhorse.

Norm notices Sky's fear. "That's just Tsu'tey; he's helping out." Norm whispers, "he thinks we're doing something to the animals, so he says he's watching us all of the time." Norm's shoulders shake while he looks down at the Na'vi beside Sky.

" You should have told him that is not true."

"I tried!" Norm said. "You think I'm gonna argue? With all of that?!"

"Hey," said a tired voice behind them. The two resume when they both see it's just Max behind them.

Max chimed in, "not too many other Na'vi chose post-trauma therapy. Tsu'tey heard about the sanctuary in one of the sessions, and now he's basically staff."

Sky had been intrigued by the colorful things on the native while Tsu'tey had promenaded the area.

"We didn't like each other right away," Sky remembered.

The following morning, Sky assembled a small flock of interns with uniforms and masks. Victoria was her first choice as assistant. Sky forgot all about the Na'vi until she came out from the field's restroom during a break and nearly died when she saw him in real life and looming over her with his giant eyes that recorded her face to memory.

Sky cornered the Na'vi while the girls cleaned waste. Tsu'tey knelt patiently and frowned while Sky assembled supplies around them like a picnic. Sky refused to let him arrange the Pandora-sized materials himself.

"Today, you can start with all of the injured viperwolves!" Sky shouted over the churning air from inside her mask.

Tsu'tey held a strange look: sadness. "It will be a task, but I will do it."

Sky gestured to the materials to use to bandage them and repeated the order he should follow.

"Understand?" Sky looked up and saw no one. Tsu'tey stalked towards the viperwolves with a knife. Sky sprinted.

Tsu'tey surveyed them all in a ring, and saw the aynantang mostly chaotic and well and trotting in circles. He thought he misheard the instructions and he stored away his knife. He felt four cold, flabby paws on his chest. Tsu'tey booted the nantang and it scampered away with a fast kahee-hee-hee-ka-koo!

Sky shreiked and yelled to him about abuse and being a legal witness.

"They are not baybees! They do not feel hurt." Tsu'tey saw the first one pause and stare at God-knows-what. He swatted a pouncing one on the jaw. Tsu'tey heard the alien scream.

Under the shade during the workers' rest, Sky said to Victoria, "He is such a brute!"

"Sky, I think you're the brute."

"Why me?"

"You're very controlling and naggy. And mean to him." Victoria said with her eyes to the grass.

"I smile at Tsu'tey all of the time!"

"That isn't enough. You should stop judging him, and let him help you more."

"I don't believe Tsu'tey has a doctorate degree."

"We're not talking about that. Sky, this isn't your home anymore. It's his. Look."

Sky heard Victoria but wished Victoria would stay quiet as usual. She noticed Tsu'tey toying with an ikran by himself in the field where the other colorful ones were coiled on the grass and sleeping or staring without movement.

"See? Does he look like he wants to hurt anything? He understands the animals differently than we do." Said Victoria.

Sky thought.

Later, Sky alerted Tsu'tey at the exit and started with an apology for calling him an animal abuser.

"I saw you playing with the ikran." Sky said during the high note of their conversation on the way out of the gate. She looked high up to see Tsu'tey chuckle. The Na'vi took on the appearance of a funny insect whenever he wore that thing on his forehead to fly home, Sky thought.

"He was so beautiful; I could not resist." Tsu'tey admitted. He makes a loud call for Unyu, for the second time. Sky uncovered boths sides of her head. "Maybe I have done wrong as well. I will trust your advice as my teacher."

They did an invisible handshake to work together from then on.

"There is...something that I also want to ask you," started Tsu'tey, who had a hesitant space in his English.

"Go ahead."

"I want to learn to read your books."

Sky leaned on the gate. Tsu'tey, a blue praying mantis in his maktoband, craned to his teacher.

"That's it?"

"If there are others, that can teach me your books before you all will go home, I want to see them."

Sky was pleased at his enthusiasm to learn. She told him something could be arranged.

During another break on another hot day in the sanctuary, Tsu'tey had been surrounded by interns who all had taken a selection from the depths of the library that had only twenty or less books that had survived from Grace's school. Tsu'tey had squinted at the aliens' microscopic scribblings in casings that had creaked with age. Victoria had reached for the ancient item from Earth and rotated it right- side-up. Tsu'tey had an epiphany and all of the girls had giggled. Sky had smiled above from her office window.

Victoria, currently cornered against a wall in Ree'ahn's coven, cowered from his angered face.

"My life has been ruined by you demons! I hate to look at you! I hate to smell you! Do you know how aytsawtute smell?" Ree'ahn bellowed in a voice from Hell, "Like dead animal!"

Victoria felt her heart skip four beats for the first time in her life.

"I hate your body! Your braids!"

Victoria flinched in the little space that she had left. The back of her head throbbed where Ree'ahn had just yanked her hair. She felt the warrior's eyes scrape her.

"You think you are nah vee?! Your kind will never See!" Ree'ahn's face contorted and he muttered, "why did you look always at me like that, like you want me to have you? Would you like that, Dreamwalker?"

Ree'ahn whapped her shoulder. She blubbered and blinked quickly.

"Kiss me; I can fulfill all of your human fantasies-and more, I promise you that!"

Victoria's face started to burn. Hot tears leaked from the Dreamwalker's eyes, her hand came to her mouth and she finally sobbed in front of him.

Words: 3768

To be continued


	13. SEE FOR YOURSELF

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piral, Ree'ahn, and Itoyo go to see the RDA base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're all speaking in Na'vi.

SEE FOR YOURSELF

\----

The forests of the Blue Flute clan were bubbling with the sound of buzzing insects, wandering pa'li hooves, lemurises babblibg in the canopy, creaking trees in breezes, sniggering Omatikayan children, and lazy-talking males and females who foraged in the forest's thickets.

"Piral! Pey!"

"It is too early for you to yell at me, Little Ree'ahn!"

Piral, with her armor and weapons never forsaken, swayed with ease away from her former student over a section of burly tree roots which had interwoven over the centuries to a landbridge. She greeted some Omatikayans from her schooldays and other adults she had known for a long time. They laughed at her when they spotted her because Piral's enthusiastic grins were a contagion with no cure.

"Karyue!" Ree'ahn saw a glimpse of Piral's body in a loincloth and a plain chest covering of roots, and he speeded after the sound of her plaitshells.

Teacher!, Piral heard Ree'ahn insist behind her over and over.

Piral took the leap to reach the next arc of giant wood on the ground, but she missed her mark. She landed firmly on her heels instead and made the foliage of the ground sizzle. She trotted gently underneath the root and resolved to stay at ground level. Ree'ahn's heels bonked! next on the forest floor.

"You cannot say to me that it is an impossible thing to happen!"

"Tsu'tey was not stolen by the Skypeople," Piral spoke to the Na'vi behind her. She slowed her pace. "And there is no experiment being done on his body. It is normal for him to disappear without telling us. Let us find the orchard so my belly will be full of fruit for the morning. Do you think it is it more fun for us to go through the river, or above the trees?"

"You speak like I am a liar, but how can you be so sure? Do not run from me anymore! Wiya," Ree'ahn breathed in exhaustion. He grabbed her arms in case she would escape and leave him out of breath.

Piral watched in irritation as her friend's hands tightened. She saw that Ree'ahn had full intention of going outside of the clan's perimeter because of the belt of sharp daggers that tied his waist, the armor and traditional weapons and Widebow he had also supplied himself with, and the spark in his gold eyes that was prepared for any danger that dared to cross his path. "You have led the Dreamwalkers to their village just the day before. Show me where to find them, and you shall see who is right for yourself. They have prepared to steal him away all along! Those demons cannot be trusted."

Piral pouted squeakily. "So be it; I will go to the orchard alone! I have plenty of other friends to share my first meal with than you." Piral made a face of defiance and sorrow to her favorite eating partner who would never run out of ways to make her laugh.

Ree'ahn prepared to respond as his hold on Piral loosened. This was far more serious than snacking on sweets. "Karyue..."

"Kaltxì," a soft male voice interrupted behind Piral. It was Itoyo, dressed in basic weaponry also.

"Toyo?" Piral cheeped. She giggled to Ree'ahn, "Tell me! Who must keep watch in the kelku, now? Hee-hee!"

Itoyo appeared to his superiors with a cautious smile and forward pattern of his steps.

"Alu..." That is..., he mumbled. There was no need for an aloud admission that he had followed them for quite a distance.

"You little pest!" Said Ree'ahn. "Not everything Piral and I do alone is for your knowledge! Go back to the kelku and clean it as I have told you."

"Do not listen to him." Piral said to the new member of the Circle. "You may stay with us...if you will keep our path a secret from everyone else."

"I will," Itoyo said. He came forward to them with more surety, but with distance from Ree'ahn, who cursed him with his eyes. "Where are we going?"

Words: 636 Next: The Warriors See the RDA Base


	14. DISCIPLINE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It takes a long time to add formatting in AAO3, but just know that when Tsu'tey talks to Ree'ahn, it's in Na'vi, and when Tsu'tey speaks to Jake, it's in English (Thanks).

DISCIPLINE  
\----

Itoyo and Piral took along Tanner and Sky to check the rain outside. They all felt the cool air and the last winds of the storm that flew by.

Tsu'tey then ushered everyone out of the kelku. Piral pranced out first, nodded with an amused-looking Tsu'tey, then led the way; Itoyo saw the outside again, held a smile at the beauty he would be hiking through, panned the view all the way to Tsu'tey's eyes, and then quickstepped after Piral; Tanner and Sky, emerging next, buzzed everyone past in a high-spirited yammer and trailed like two ducklings after Itoyo, who walked at a followable pace across the bridge; then, Victoria toe-stepped from the house with her head down and her arms folded. Ree'ahn, in uniform, trumped out last while dodging from Tsu'tey's eye.

Ree'ahn eventually felt his shoulder crushed in tight fingers that pushed his body in place.

With a different sounding calm, Tsu'tey told Victoria to walk ahead with Piral and Itoyo.

The group made distance. In the middle of Tanner's question to Sky about which M.R.E she was going to choose to eat for dinner, the Avatars jumped and turned around.

They saw the other warrior standing motionless and gazing at the forest while low words lumbered from Tsu'tey's voice. Another sharp accent.

Itoyo looked at Piral. He then called to the Dreamwalkers to keep their eyes forward and follow along. Tanner and Sky turned with some last looks and followed the warriors ahead, but Victoria lingered.

Tsu'tey's hand shook Ree'ahn's scruff and tossed his head, and the warrior staggered and stilled. Tsu'tey's mouth moved and he waited. Tsu'tey seized Ree'ahn's face to look at him. Ree'ahn swung.

It took a struggle, some clumsy steps and many grunts, huffs, and puffs before Tsu'tey wrangled Ree'ahn into submission. Tsu'tey yanked him in a stiff circle by his hair. Ree'ahn shrieked before Tsu'tey slapped him once-twice. He tossed him aside. Ree'ahn's hands cradled his head as he panted on the ground. Tsu'tey nursed his jaw. He spoke again. Ree'ahn faltered to his feet.

Victoria raced to the group before she was noticed.

Later, Tsu'tey chewed teylu painfully and felt uneasy. He saw Ree'ahn, orange and green from the firelight, waddle near him in a loincloth and swinging necklaces. Ree'ahn lowered himself beside Tsu'tey in the crowd of Omatikayans. Ree'ahn bent forward over his crossed legs, and his hair fanned out just below his shoulders, and his tsaheylu and tail were still.

"There was no room to sit anywhere else." Ree'ahn said.

One of the people was in the middle of a vocal solo, but only a handful were still paying attention. The other Na'vi were busy eating and talking in duos or in groups of twenty.

Ree'ahn spoke bitterly, "fuck you. you have never slapped Piral or Itoyo."

"I do not enjoy discipline!" said Tsu'tey. He still felt terrible about it, but any warrior that striked him would be treated the same; he or she have to be conditioned immediately to never, ever do it again. Tsu'tey did not know he would ever need to do so until today, and not on his own friend, either.

Ree'ahn's face didn't like Tsu'tey's answer.

"It is a fine thing that you want to be my successor, and I have every faith in your abilities, but, please, eylan, you can never be a true leader if you do not learn to control your anger." Tsu'tey looked earnestly to Ree'ahn. Ree'ahn was so different from how he remembered him. "I am sorry for hurting you."

Ree'ahn stared at the fire.

Tsu'tey watched the crowd in the night. "The Omatikaya, we are a very proud people, Ree'ahn"-Tsu'tey couldn't stop a chuckle-"and you are the proudest." He went on, gingerly, "but we are not evil."

Ree'ahn listened. Yip-pee-pee's sprung from the crowd when the performance was finished.

Tum-tums and rolls started from drums.

Ree'ahn confessed, "I do not like your new friends." He twisted an adornment on his lace from his ikinimaya. His gold eyes fell low and his voice sounded small. "I am lonely all of the time. Are we only warriors now, and nothing else?" In the next moment, Ree'ahn felt a strong palm on his shoulder.

"I am always your friend first."

A tug, gentle, rose Ree'ahn's lip into a tiny smile. He turned to share it with Tsu'tey.

Then Ree'ahn muttered, "you slap me again...and you will be speaking to me through a pink string."

"I wouldn't be suprised." Tsu'tey winced as he ate and touched his jaw. "By Eywa, you can punch!"

A low "sorry" in Na'vi came from Tsutey's left.

"But there is something I want you to do."

Ree'ahn snarled.

"I want for you to apologize to Victoria for whatever you have said to hurt her."

Her name was Vik-tor-weeya, Ree'ahn learned. Once he got really angry, he would see red and wouldn't know what happened after that. All Ree'ahn remembered were her tears.

"There is no time left. Viktorweeya will leave on her floating machine very soon, as she has told me when we have spoken." Ree'ahn admitted lowly, twisting his lace into a tight spring.

Tsu'tey chuckled knowingly. "There will be time the next day. Skypatel will return to say goodbye, and she, of course, will bring the others." Tsu'tey looked at Ree'ahn's troubled eyes that were concentrated on the flickering firepit.

"I will apologize," Ree'ahn muttered in promise, "but only if you will stop going to the demons' village. You waste too much of your day with them when you could be spending it here. The clan needs you here."

Tsu'tey nodded and thought that he may be right. He had helped Jake sully's people enough. It was time to reintegrate himself again with his duties to his own tribe.

The rhythm from the large and tiny Omatikayan drums wheeled and spun with each other in unison and called to Ree'ahn. His tail flashed once with potential energy. He smirked to himself and sighed with submission, "I will dance." Ree'ahn rose and he nudged Tsu'tey with his bare foot. "Come and join me before Mi'nat begs to dance with me," he insisted with a growing smile he couldn't help.

Tsu'tey felt shy and said, "I am very tired, Ree'ahn."

"Esh!" Ree'ahn scoffed, quickly forgetting why he bothered to ask.

Tsu'tey looked up after a time to see Ree'ahn moving before the group fire all by himself. Tsu'tey watched him and wondered why Ree'ahn always closed his eyes when he danced.

A moment later, Tsu'tey groaned inside when big, brown feathers appeared next to him.

The tsamsiyu'eyktan and the Olo'eyktan watched the lone dancer windmill his hair to the drums and move in a trance.

Jakesully oinked to Tsu'tey. "Who is that?"

"That is Ree'ahn, he is warrior."

"Oh. Ha-ha-ha."

Mi'nat, who squeed over Ree'ahn's laughs from the feeling of her feet in air, held to her brother's arms as he whirled her in circles.

Jake said, "so, did you think about the position?" He showed a new gesture from the Skypeople by bouncing together his fingers.

Agreeing to be Jake's adviser would cement his separation from Sky and his new friends, but his promise to Ree'ahn proppelled him to tell Jakesully, "I choose to be mowarsiyu, yes."

Air released from Jake like a balloon. "Okay-so first-things-first-"

Tsu'tey stopped his chews on the larvae as Jakesully began to ramble about questions about restoration of the clan or the qualities to search for in a new Hometree. Jake had not stopped to check if Tsu'tey was listening, so Tsu'tey turned his focus to the taste of the teylu.

"-so I guess that'll be an issue, too! But, there's one thing I need to ask you."

Tsu'tey listened, and he ate a bit more carefully.

"Who were the Avatars who entered here against my orders?"

Tsu'tey swallowed dryly. A warrior must have informed Jake in false alarm that the new Dreamwalkers meant unknown danger. He thought he should speak in his defense that he had immediately escorted his friends to their home after the rains. Before Tsu'tey made a decision of what to say, Jake gave an ultimatum.

"Neytiri and I will question them tomorrow, when they return." Jake wisely predicted. "And you will bring them to us."


	15. THE WARRIORS SEE THE RDA BASE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same story; when the warriors speak among themselves, they speak in Na'vi.

THE WARRIORS SEE THE RDA BASE  
\---

Sky, Tanner and Victoria trudged with their boots in the grass and knees close to their stomachs along the barb-wire gate that enclosed the RDA's biome garden, barracks, and outdoor gym for the Avatar drivers. Sky, in the lead, looked up to see a camera roving at a 360-degree angle. She knew from Parker's unattended blueprints that all of the cameras had a blindspot. This camera could not see the backyard of the Driver barracks with much precision. They could all disappear unnoticed if they all climbed over the fence when the camera's eye pivoted from them. She waited for the right moment.

"Now!"

Sky's whispered command spurred all three of the drivers to scale the wire. The metal clanged and jingled like a tambourine when the group fell into the foliage of the other side and rolled undercover by a family of huge ferns with fans as big as palm trees. Now under the ferns' cool shade, the four of them saw the camera spot the vacant place where they should have been caught unsupervised.

The group's terror fizzled to kiddy, soft laughter. They jogged into the edges of the Omatikayan territory and squashed plants and shrubs in their path.

Victoria wavered. Everyone stopped to encourage her forward, but she refused to go after them.

"Vicky. Come on!" Tanner whined.

"We didn't go the same direction as last time!" Victoria said. "This isn't the right way."

"There were too many people watching. We would have gotten busted!" Sky explained as she started to bike forward on her Avatar's feet.

"Don't make us wait for you. Do you wanna come or not?!" Tanner added from far away.

Victoria galloped to Tanner at the tail of the group so that she would have a sure way to return to the base. Her heavy gearpack weighted her steps, and Tanner warned her to be silent.

Just above their noses and out of earshot, Ree'ahn, Piral and Itoyo looked in wonder at the aerial view of the RDA base.

"Wow." Itoyo sighed.

"You were right," Piral said. All the color had been erased from the land as Ree'ahn had told her.

In its place were unmoving rows of metallic, slender jetcrafts, jittering bulldozers that rolled to their destinations and left a trail of noise behind them, one or three AMP robots that walked to and fro, and groups of short, pale-skinned to wood-skinned Humans without tails or tswins.

There were too many square-like, grey buildings to number. Closer to the three Na'vi was a plot of fruits, plants and roots they could name from their clan, a homely shelter that gave them memories of Graceaugustine's abandoned and dusty schoolhouse, and a monumental sculpture of bars and ropes and stairs and wood and footswings in which even more Dreamwalkers appeared in view.

Piral felt more intrigued than afraid to see the home of Skypatel and Tannermartinez, who she had met in Tsu'tey's company. She could not determine the location of the Human hospital. She knew a few of her own people were still in recovery there, like Atan, another fellow comrade of the Circle of Warriors.

Itoyo looked troubled. He coiled into himself when a loud helicopter rumbled its way into the base and slapped his face and long braids with wind. Everything of the Humans moved too quickly and magically. He felt it was very disturbing to be near their settlement on Pandora and he wanted nothing more than to be near familiar things and people again. "How many more like Jakesully are there?" Itoyo inquired.

"I do not know! Why do you ask me as if I am their keeper?!" Ree'ahn lashed. His golden eyes looked over the entire base like he had seen it for the first time from his ikran after he had followed Tsu'tey. Even his own ikran had become afraid and had urged Ree'ahn's senses, from its distress and flashbacks, to flee to his homeland. He did not see Tsu'tey, and did not know if the observation should upset him or calm him. He had a feeling Tsu'tey wasn't there, after all. Piral could be correct.

The trio's ears alerted to two Humans who strolled along the perimeter of the fence. One was dressed in the garb of the soldiers whom Itoyo, Ree'ahn and Piral had fought in the battle. The other wore a white garment that covered his arms to his wrists and with shiny, rounded stones on its front. His legs were covered in dark pants and on his feet were smaller than the soldier's boots and were black and shiny.

Parker Selfridge talked to his subordinate on his impromptu surveillance of the Avatar unit. After Jake Sully's complete transition from Human to Na'vi, there was a possibility that another Driver could go rouge and jump the fence to the territory in search of their own fantasy just a short time before the personnel would return to Earth. So far, their conversation shifted from security concerns to future operations after the catastrophic clash with the Na'vi.

"We're coming back in just a few years or so. We will just have to wait until this whole thing blows over. It may take a while." Parker formed the right words with his hands. "Now, we didn't fail. Things just, got outta hand. I'm gonna fix this. I have to."

"What about the unobtanium, sir?" the soldier asked.

"I'm not sure about that. We'll deal with one thing at a time." Parker checked his watch and mentioned, "it's lunchtime." Then, the pair dissappeared from the warriors' view.

"What have they said?!" Piral asked.

"His English is too fast and sounds strange to me," Ree'ahn apologized. The important-looking man had an English accent he couldn't understand.

"Fwew-!" Said Itoyo.

Ree'ahn followed the fast dip of Itoyo's head below him. He saw the Dreamwalkers from the other day wander in a pack amidst the territory just like Tsu'tey had foretold. Viktorweeya's head floated past his vision. His tail snapped alertly in interest, and a strange weight grew in his heartbeat. Victoria wore the same cloth as before, one that encased all of her limbs and her torso in joined seams and that had plain lettering on its breast. She had called it a 'jumpsuit". Her face, meanwhile, looked conflicted compared to the other Dreamwalkers.

"Should we let them know we are here?" Itoyo said.

"You are scared of your own shadow, Toyo!" Piral answered, descending from the tall tree.

"That is a lie!" Itoyo challenged in a hushed voice. He descended just the same.

Ree'ahn felt a twinge of guilt the more he studied Victoria. He would keep his promise to Tsu'tey, only he didn't know how . Without warning, his tail was pulled by Piral to come down from the tree.

Ree'ahn's tail struck Piral's hand before he faced her with a frown. Then, he scurried from the tree after her.

Words: 1115 Next: Becoming Friends With The Na'vi


	16. BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, when the warriors speak with themselves it's in Na'vi, the context will show when English is spoken.

BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 1)  
\----

"Hey, look!" Said Tanner. Everyone stopped their walk and came close to Piral.

"Oel ngati kameie!" Sky said with a voice of sunshine. Sky waved to Piral and walked briskly behind Tanner over some thick growths.

"Kame ngat!" Piral said to everyone.

Ree'ahn spoke with authority to the Avatars, " Do not make us find trouble. Why have you returned?"

"It was Sky's idea!" Tanner protested.

"A final farewell would be nice," Sky proclaimed. "We'll miss you all." After she translated, Itoyo and Piral agreed.

"We'll be out of here by sundown." Tanner assured to Ree'ahn and himself. He remembered the headcount of the Avatars on the base was every night ever since Jake had went rogue.

Ree'ahn relented, but not without a huff. The Dreamwalkers appeared to be telling the truth. He warned, "You stay where you come the next day!"

"Do not yell so loudly in the daytime," Piral whined to Ree'ahn. She perked. "Ree'ahntsyìp says you will stay? Come and eat with us for the morning, then. We will have fruit from the tìhawnuwll!"

Piral's hospitality made Sky feel more confident in her answer, "sure."

Itoyo became Sky's partner on the trail to the orchard behind Tanner and Piral, who all spearheaded through the forest.

Victoria stepped far behind her friends. She had no idea what a tìhawnuwll was, and she wished she had time to disbag her bilingual dictionary to keep up with everyone.

Ree'ahn walked on to the destination. The tall Dreamwalker behind him had lost her focus because of a Rungfwam in front of her that waddled its huge, cinnamon-brown thorax past her legs and poked the new terrain in front of it with its rosy antennae. In the corner of his vision, the woman forwarded to where he stood in wait for her. Ree'ahn resisted the strong urge to leave her behind as he pushed on. He allowed the quiet opportunity to apologise to her pass by without mention.

Victoria remained close yet distant from the remaining warrior who knew where Piral and Itoyo were headed and continued lazily in their general direction. He appeared to be in a better mood, but she was too afraid to comment on his rant that had kept her up all night. She felt underserving of his directed hate for Dreamwalkers, and she wanted to voice it while she had the chance. However, she remained unspeaking.

The daylight warmed the backs of the Dreamwalkers and the Omatikayan warriors of the Circle while Piral led everyone through a forest passage with low hanging vines and a sweet scent of fruit in the air. Clusters of stalks like bamboo had to be pushed out of each Na'vi's way. Sky emerged after the last of the warriors to lead them in her field boots, long skirt, and sweaty tank. Tanner had unbuttoned the chests of his uniform of camoflauge. His gear was heavier than the others not only for his medical supplies, but also because of the snacks he had stashed for hiking. He tripped into step after Sky and flattened his floppy sun-hat to his head before it was lost on the ground. Victoria was last to appear through the stalks.

The group settled in a secluded orchard of fruit of the Spartan plant that grew in the giant shadow of a mountain. It was indigo from their distance. The Omatikayans who filled the orchard were older children who did not have long to complete their final rites of passage to become fully-functional members of the clan. The adults and elder Na'vi had congregated elsewhere for the day at the ruins of Kelutral. There, the presence of the fossil of Toruk lingered on, and being near the soil of Hometree kept alive the elders' shared belief that life had not changed after the war with the RDA. However, the younger generation of Omatikayans knew better, and had chosen the orchard to speak and laugh among themselves about their own secrets and hidden admirers, away from the eavesdropping ears of the elders. Only at night when it was time for the clan to eat as a family would the younger Na'vi return to the grounds that had been central to the Omatikayan's survival for decades.

In a soil-path between hedges of Spartan plants, Piral made space for everyone and lowered to sit on the ground. Her tail flared last and then curled in a spiral around her folded knees. She spoke in Na'vi and motioned at the ankles of the Dreamwalkers.

"Sit, there." Ree'ahn clarified to Victoria, who was nearly clueless.

Piral released the harvest piled in her arms and offered everyone a fruit from the thick-stemmed and leafy Spartan plant.

Sky took her offer and ate it right away. Itoyo watched Tanner bite his fruit first before he did the same. Tanner licked purple juice from his chin and chuckled with Piral at the mess he had made on his shirt.

Victoria told Piral "irayo" and examined her fruit for bugs. Insects she never knew the name of were zzzzing by her ear at every other second and landing on her nose and ears and eyes like raindrops. She fanned away her face and found it impossible to take one bite.

Tanner swallowed a chunk of fruit with the tang of grape wine and syrup like a ripe mango. "I love these," he concluded. He smiled purple teeth behind his hand. He evrn liked the sour aftertaste. Each new bite sweetened his mouth.

Sky shared with Piral, "We grow this fruit on the base. It's better for the Avatars to eat."

Ree'ahn thought about Sky's sentence as Itoyo and Piral chatted with the Dreamwalkers about what other fruits they liked to eat from the clan. The whole Avatar operation made no sense to him. Ree'ahn took another bite in thought while facing away from Sky to the view of the tree-carpeted mountains under the blue sky.

Itoyo kneaded wet fruitskin in his molars. He swallowed and continued to answer a question of what he and the two other warriors had planned for the day. "The first task for us will not be easy work. Gathering for the kelku takes a long time."

"What kind of stuff do you need to find?" Tanner asked him, somewhat fluently compared to Sky.

"They are usual medicines someone keeps in a home. 'Umsta skxirtsyip, for small wounds. 'Umsta spxin for nausea, and 'umsta hawhaw for days we cannot sleep."

"Where would those be?" Sky said.

"Very high in the mountains." Itoyo smiled. He pointed to where Ree'ahn was daydreaming and chewing. "You can see them from here."

"Wait!" Piral said. "I have forgotten something. You cannot be dressed like that! It will look strange and others will know who you are. You also will not be comfortable." She looked in plain thought to Itoyo and whispered, "what will we do?"

The Avatars ate and listened to the warriors whisper. Itoyo said something to Piral that made her make a sound of clarity and disbelief that she hadn't thought of it first. Piral told Tanner, "We will see Renéharper!"

"René...Harper?" Sky stammered. Tanner looked shocked. They had heard he had died nearly twenty years ago during his time teaching in the 2130s with Grace.

"Srane." Answered Piral. "Renéharper likes to make clothes and laces and crafts for the children. He may have something you are able to wear. You will see." Piral stuck a final piece of fruit in her mouth and called for Itoyo. The smaller warrior followed Piral at her tail to jog away from the orchard.

"Hey...hey, wait!" Tanner said. He snickered to Sky, "they run everywhere!"

Victoria remained with Ree'ahn and felt left out. She had understood little of what was said, and no one bothered to make sure she could follow the conversation. Her friends knew much more than her about the Na'vi and the RDA's history on Pandora because of their specialized positions in the RDA. Interns had an elementary knowledge-enough to pass an interview and make a grade above failing on an entry-level Na'vi language exam. Her education was a modest one compared to her friends, who's knowledge and experience made them trust Piral without hesitation even if Piral was running blindly into a wilderness they had never walked through a day in their life. Victoria had heard of René Harper, but she did not know why they were so eager to meet him, and no one had taken time to explain anything.

Victoria balled the fruit in between her hands and wished Piral hadn't found them so they could all do something peaceful insted, like more sightseeing.

"Hey! Will you eat it or will you not eat it?"

Victoria looked up and almost bruised Ree'ahn's nose. "K-kempe?!" Victoria mumbled, fearing if the Na'vi responded to her, she only be confused.

"Lam fwa na rey..." It seems you live..., Ree'ahn whispered to himself.

Ree'ahn retracted from the woman's teal and sparkling face and sat on his haunches. She was not delirious after all. He went on in English. "Piral has lost her time when she takes the fruit for you. You will not eat this? So, put this fruit there in my hand and do not be so wasteful!"

Victoria ignored his limp, open palm and snagged a loud bite of the fruit. Victoria quickly hid her face and grimaced; her teeth almost sickled from the fruit's sweetness. The fruit Piral had given her was way too ripe. However, she refused to share anything with the warrior who still hadn't apologized for what he had said to her.

Ree'ahn wedged his eyelids at the wincing woman with her hand over her mouth. "Do what you want," he grunted. He had room for another helping, but chose to let the landscape distract him from feeling hungry. He stood to follow the others and popsickled his fingers clean. The woman would follow him eventually if she did not want to be left alone in an unfamiliar place.

Victoria stood in resolution. She had come this far and it was better to stay close to people she knew, even if she preferred to do something else.

Ree'ahn spit out some seeds. Next, he walked ahead of Victoria so she would follow him to see Renéharper. All of the sweet juice made him thirsty, but he knew that soon they would pass an opposite end of the waterfall and river.

Victoria heard the sound of bubbling water and then the familiar waterfall from the past day in the clan unveiled under in her vision like a colossal painting. The site looked different in morning light than it had in stormy weather. It looked calm and peaceful. The spray from the falls did not roar in her ears but hissed as a gentle mist. The treelife that bordered it had the color of honey in the morning and the water looked pale-lavendar.

Ree'ahn went forward to walk along the edge of the falls to continue to the place where René Harper preferred to stay.

With Tanner and Sky running with her a short time before, Victoria had never doubted they would catch her if she had slipped. With Ree'ahn, there was no guarantee he would not watch her drown. She would have to be careful for herself.

Ree'ahn scanned for a ledge to descend to the water. He detoured from the safe-looking path Victoria was led in. Victoria felt her heart spike as the Na'vi skipped on the edge of the cliff and trotted down a slippery depression that led to the grounds of the river.

Victoria heard Ree'ahn call, "go and I will come there to you- I need water!"

Victoria carefully put one boot in front of the other and flattened tiny flower growths in her way. She felt her stomach fill with feathers and her feet felt like cement blocks. In her ears, she heard her own breathing. Slowly but surely, she made it to the midpoint of the view of the waterfall.

She could see Ree'ahn cup water to his mouth. His apathy was anything but comforting.

Victoria's knees began to rattle. She bent her legs to make her steps feel shorter and stable. Her boots squeaked on drenched twigs and plants. Finally, she stepped her boot in forest. The first action she did was to hug a solid tree and huff air into its bark. It took her a shorter time to calm herself than she expected. Her personal smile weakened when feet and metal clinks sounded from the coast of the falls into the safe darkness under the tree Victoria had found.

Ree'ahn pushed belts of wet hair from his eyes and dried his mouth. He puffed, and then he looked to the tree-hugging woman and spoke.

Next: Becoming Friends With The Na'vi Part 2


	17. BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 2)

BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI PART 2: MEETING DR. RENE HARPER  
\---

Victoria unlatched her arms from the tree, but luckily Ree'ahn didn't comment about the bearhug she gave it. Rather, he looked hesitant about the rest of the journey. Victoria thought he looked like she had on her first day in the clan.

Ree'ahn couldn't spot Piral from his distance, and his memory of the path to Reneharper's camp was blurred. The next landmark he could remember of the path was the old schoolhouse of his childhood, which was not far from the waterfalls of the kelku which he had just drank from. He didn't feel comfortable passing the old school because of the tragedy that happened there. Piral would have known his feelings and taken a better roundabout. Now, Ree'ahn had no option but to trust his memory and head there. Then, after that, should he walk east or west? He would have to keep moving to find out.

Ree'ahn turned left. He saw the Dreamwalker had been observing him with expectation, and with something else that suprised him a little. Was it curiosity? The woman averted her eyes too soon for him to know for sure. He did not take long to dwell on it. He thought of apologizing then, but decided not to.

"Move feet." Ree'ahn said behind him to Victoria.

Victoria glanced to where she had come, and allowed herself to relish in a tiny feeling of accomplishment.

The Avatars wondered where Victoria went. After a moment, they saw Victoria and Ree'ahn coming from an alternate path where the sound of the falls carried from.

"Za'u, Ree'ahn, we will not wait for you all day!" Piral yelled. "Toyo moves more quickly than you!"

"It is the Dreamwalker you mean to speak to!" Ree'ahn yelled at a higher volume.

Piral heard the relief in his voice but did not poke fun at Ree'ahn for not hiding it well. She squinted and saw Victoria's figure wobble into view through the dense forest. The two merged with the rest of the group.

The shadows of the belly of the forest swelled in the parts where less Omatikaya chose to venture. The group reached a depression and sledded carefully along a leafy hill. They landed and all looked high up to see the sunlight they were going to leave behind.

The cool of the darker forest felt nice on their skin. They walked across a six foot wide root that bridged over a massive mesh of ferns. The Avatars could keep up more than they could before with the Na'vi by copying the Na'vi's pattern of balance on their forefeet and toes.

The schoolhouse, dark and broken and dusty and empty, appeared wedged in the forest like a shell in sand. Some sunlight had slipped into the land and it glared on the school and gave the wooden, dust-caked building an eerie spotlight. Decades of debris sparkled and floated in the sunbeams.

The Avatars stopped to look at the school and reflect on Grace while the warriors moved on as swiftly as possible. Then, the three of them continued to jog with the warriors to find René.

René Harper was born in Bermuda, and he became a top candidate for the RDA as a graduate in the early 2120s. He became one of the favorite instructors of the Omatikayan children because of his extraordinary ability for language learning and teaching.

He and Grace Augustine survived a sudden ambush of the clan's schoolhouse in response to an angered uprising to the RDA by a group of Na'vi, due to sparked tensions. There were bullet holes in the walls of the school that never put the memory to rest.

René vowed to never return to the RDA after the assault. He sought refuge among the Omatikayans and was the first to be reincarnated as a Na'vi by Mo'at.

Past the school ruins and approaching his fiftieth birthday, René lived in solitude in the clan and quickly found his niche in creating articles or toys for young clan members. Sometimes he fashioned items for adults, if they were as generous with their patience.

René never found the chance to relocate into Hometree as he had wished. He preferred to live in the open as he had in his childhood on Earth. His place of work was a simple shelter of tree leaves and twigs packed onto tall stalks that slouched from the weight of the plants René had blanketed them with. A firepit at his feet had been stomped out the night before by his sandals, which were still wearable after more than ten years. His cargo pants were as yellowed, blackened and sweaty as his sleeveless t-shirt with a fading RDA logo. Around his neck were three simple chains of colorful beads that some Omatikayans had gifted him over the years, to show their compassion for his dull wardrobe from Earth.

When the warriors found him, René had his back turned and he was scraping two flints together to start a fire that would burn until the start of the evening and roast the easy game he would catch when he felt like doing so. The firepit lit and crackled to life. Just as René's hands warmed, he heard a group of Na'vi approaching. He showed a wrinkled, pleased smile because he had new company after several days. "Kaltxì," he called when the bodies sounded close enough.

"Kaltxì..." Itoyo, Piral and Ree'ahn harmonized to René's silvering hair and tsaheylu.

Piral spoke up, "we need coverings and loincloths for two boys and two girls!"

"Surely you have more to say to me. We have not spoken for days, 'evi". René faced his past student who was now fully matured into a young lady. "You've gotten so pretty." He cooed aloud in English. He touched Piral's blossoming cheeks with both hands and straightened the maktoband on her head in the same position as the other warriors with her.

He saw his other student, Ree'ahn. "Nga, Ree'ahnsayrìp!" You, handsome one! "Dry your hair in my fire or I will mistake you for a swirä!" Creature.

Ree'ahn retreated with a snicker when René swiped for his wet head.

René chuckled as he noticed a new face with them. The youngest one of them all had a single lace of small hoops around his neck. A Tayrangi, René knew. René questioned to himself, how had he met the others?

Itoyo acknowledged René politely and smiled shyly to the ground; it was his first time meeting René, too, like the Avatars.

René continued, "what have you all heard will be for the meal this night?"

Ree'ahn started, "yerik, si teylu, si-", but he was silenced by Piral's swat to his ribs.

"We do not have much time to talk, karyuan!" Piral giggled to René. "You will make the items I have asked?"

"Well, do you know the rank of these boys and girls? Do they have any preferences? I must know before I begin." He glanced to Piral, who looked unsure of what to say. "Return when you can tell me those things."

Ree'ahn admitted, "we cannot! Piral is telling half-truths. The coverings she asks of are for tsawtute."

René eyed Ree'ahn and the warriors as he voiced in disbelief, "tsawtute?! You are sure of this?!"

"They are coming now behind us, karyu. Fwew."

René flashed his eyes at the three Avatars who finally made it to his shelter. René blurted to the group, in slight fear, "what the hell do you want from me?!"

Words: 1281


	18. BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 3)

BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 3)  
\----

"Doctor...?" Tanner attempted. He joined Victoria and Sky, who had a hand held out against René. Dr. Harper looked a whole lot more than irritated.

"Don't play games with me!" René said lowly. "The RDA sent you here to find me?! Great work. You did it! But I'm never going back. If any of you put your hands on me, you be ready to fight!"

"No, no-it's not like that!" Sky said. "We...we came here on our own."

"What have you been doing out here all this time, Doc?" Tanner said.

René looked hesitant to speak. "I couldn't go back to Earth! Not with people who murder children in cold blood." He shook his head and released a gravelly sigh. The wrinkles on his face that had made him look intimidating to the Avatars now made René look his age and burdened with memories.

Victoria peeked from behind Tanner's shoulders and expected Tanner to speak. The warriors, including Piral, kept silent.

Tanner relaxed his stance and repeated in confusion, "'Cold blood'?"

Sky confronted the Na'vi. "We don't get it. What do you mean?"

René retold the morning that ended the Omatikayan school forever. Following Na'vi retaliation of the presence of Humans on their planet, the RDA military had carried out it's threat to assault the clan's schoolhouse, with children like the chieftess of Eytukan and elder sister to Neytiri, Sylwanin, inside. "Grace thought she could change the RDA so nothing like that day would ever happen again." René pointed at the Avatars that remained in a close huddle at a distance from the teacher.

René thought of the recent war. "She was wrong! Even more Na'vi have died, and now there is nothing that can be done about it! Nothing will change."

"There's still time," Sky replied seriously. She approached René from Tanner's guard and looked surely into René's hardened gold eyes with her own. "With Quaritch gone, the second mission will work, for Humans and Na'vi. We will learn to see each other for who we really are: part of the same universe."

René smirked for the first time at the Avatars and his eyes looked less hard than they had been. "Second mission, huh? I'll believe that when I see it."

René glanced to the three quiet warriors. He asked Ree'ahn, "what is the reason you have allowed them to join you? It is unusual."

"They have agreed to gather with us for the morning. There is a chance there will be others from the clan where we must go." Ree'ahn explained to his teacher with an intrigued eye on Sky. Sky's friends remained patient at her side and looked like they agreed with Sky's words about future peace between the species. "If you understand, Renéharper, they cannot be dressed in such clothing or they will look out of place and silly. Fwew ayfol."

René observed the four and agreed. The Omatikayans were only used to one oddly-dressed Na'vi, and that was himself.

"You came to the right place." René said to the Avatars. "Hopefully, there's something for all of you to wear. Stay put." René retreated to find coverings that would fit the Avatars.

The warriors and Avatars watched René rummage.

"I had no idea that happened." Tanner said with a thoughtful pinch of his eyes after René. "Why didn't Grace say anything?"

Sky replied somberly, "some things are just better left unsaid." She thought of René's story, too. She then concluded, "it was so brave of René to stay here. I could never do it."

"I could." Tanner whispered back. His tail licked. "Hell. What's so great about Earth? It smells, the streets are full of smoke, you have to wear a mask everywhere, and the trees are all made of plastic. And the water tastes like shit."

Victoria agreed to herself.

"You wouldn't last one day here in Pandora on your own." Sky said.

"Who says we'll be on our own? We'll join these guys. Doctor Harper has the right idea," he replied.

Join the Omatikaya? Sky inferred. The thought made something childlike inside of her tingle. It was a complete fantasy for Tanner to suggest that. But Tanner sounded like he believed the feat could be done for them, too, as with Jake.

Sky worried she might break Parker's heart if she had lived her dreams of staying on Pandora forever. "It's not that easy," Sky said to her friends, but she hoped it was.

Sky became curious about Victoria's opinion. Victoria hadn't talked much during their escapade from the base. "Vicky, would you ever stay here if you had the chance to...Vicky?"

Victoria listened to Itoyo and Piral as they waited for René to return to the front of his shelter. Just moments before, the three of the Omatikayan warriors had stood together like they were in a funeral. Tsu'tey had never spoken of what happened at his school to Sky or Victoria. It could be that Tsu'tey had not been there, or it was painful for him to remember it also. The hushed Na'vi shared between the Omatikayans sounded private.

Piral finished speaking to Itoyo, and then she smiled sadly. Her ears suddenly ascended and she made a loud outburst as if something was suddenly hilarious. Piral's hand rushed to Ree'ahn. His attention was brought to the present and his loose hair shifted over his shoulder when he alerted to Piral. Victoria heart stunned when Ree'ahn glanced her way.

"That one always looks at you. It is funny!" Piral said. She watched Victoriacheong hug her frame. Startled, the woman then answered a question of her shorter Dreamwalker friend, Skypatel.

"I think it is frightening." Ree'ahn replied to Piral. He felt oddly self-conscious.

Itoyo noticed Renéharper approaching them with three loincloths and two pairs of long leaf-laces that females would wear over their breasts.

René said to Piral, "they will need help putting these on. These are not made new, so handle them gently or they will tear and be useless. I have a favor to ask of you all first before you go. While you are in the mountains, will you return with a meal for me? I have had enough of beetles for the year, so I won't be joining you all for the meal this night."

"I know just what you will like! We will return soon, teacher!" Piral promised Rebé. She felt him touch her shoulder.

"You three be careful." René advised the Avatars of his own kind. "You're not the only thing walking around out there, or the biggest." René looked at Sky. "I would like to... share more with you all, and hear about yourselves. A lot must have changed after all these years. I hope this won't be our last meeting."

After some more well-wishes, René watched the posse disappear from his view as he waited by his snapping fire.

The Avatars had exchanged their wear at Dr. Harper's shelter. Tanner embraced the freedom that the single loincloth gave to his limbs. The clothes of the Omatikayans made more sense than they appeared. The cloth, a dried hide from an unknown creature, was colored brown and was long enough to stay put in a sudden wind and was short enough to not be an obstacle in his way. Tanner's Avatar had a medium build that fitted becomingly into his loincloth. He was proud of his Avatar's visible muscles that he had spent time developing on his own in his time on the basketball court of the base with Victoria. His tail stung from the laces of the loincloth that Ree'ahn had wound to it, but he was grateful that the cloth hadn't slipped off yet from all of the jogging they were doing. His hair was simple and was braided into his tsaheylu to keep from his face. When he arrived at each new turn of forest the warriors led them through, his smile would show most of his excitement. His eyes were almond-shaped like his own Human DNA. Tanner coveted the plain accessories he saw on the two male warriors ahead of him and theorized what they might have been for. The warrior with long braids, Itoyo, who kept last behind the older looking warrior named Ree'ahn and the female warrior named Piral, had unique trinkets on his body as close to his skin as tattoos. Tanner was helped over a branch by Itoyo and got a close up look of Itoyo's wiry-looking bracelets. Tanner would ask about them later, he resided.

Victoria and Sky and Piral walked together at a followable distance from the men. Tanner found the long hike from René's shelter more enjoyable. The excitement Sky felt at seeing a hidden side of Pandora, in the lush wilderness of the cliffs, pushed her forward. When they all arrived, Sky would ask what the Omatikayans called the landscape. Surrounding them all was the silence of the high woodlands of the cliffs. Half of the ecosystem shrouded the group in darkness and the other half, adjacent to the cliffs they hiked, was blurred from their distance and tinted nearly yellow in the bright daylight. Sky regretting leaving her camera behind. The view was more majestic than the Himalayas in summer. Sky's eyes could almost see the Hallelujah mountains. She could hear ikrans making noises from far away. It was unfair that the warriors could have such a view whenever they wished.

Dark leaves tickled her chest as she strolled. Sky felt like she was wearing a rug over her thighs with tweed for a waistband, but she also felt liberated in them and not as constrained as she had been on Earth. She felt like a huge weight of something-expections, modesty, or whatever had held her from her true Self- had left her shoulders.

At her side, Victoria tugged at a fan of leaves over her small bust that kept slipping towards her ribcage. She sighed roughly and she moved to twiddle with her new outfit. She knew that her height and lack of curves were probably to blame.

Piral noticed and retied Victoria's covering another time as Victoria hung her head.

"You look pretty in this, like one of us." Piral said to Victoria. Victoria understood Piral through her compassionate smile. Victoria offered Piral a twinge of her lips and followed the warrior ahead with Sky.

On the trail, Piral halted in front of Ree'ahn and Itoyo and shouted, "Pey!"

"What is it now, Piral?" Ree'ahn groaned, far from the group and with an eye on the area they would gather some miles ahead.

"What is the reason we are going by foot?! Call your ikrans and we will meet in the skies!"

"You are suggesting the tsawtute will come along in flight?!" Ree'ahn said.

"They must! We cannot leave them behind!" Piral called.

Itoyo smiled at Sky and said, "I choose to fly with Skypatel; she is kind to me."

Sky and Victoria reuinted with Tanner. The warriors continued to argue mildly.

"What's going on?" Tanner muttered.

"I'm not sure..." Sky answered. She shushed everyone and listened carefully to the exchange of Na'vi between the warriors in their lead.

"I will ride with the quiet one!" Piral bargained.

"Kehe. That one will fly with me." Ree'ahn announced over the distance. "Toyo has decided his rider. My ikran is too young for two passengers besides myself. Your ikran is older and stronger and is able to take many in the air. Both of the males will fly with you, and the other woman I will carry. Do not argue with me any longer." His fading voice said lastly, "hurry to the top of a tree and meet your ikran so we will finish our duties before Tsu'tey returns."

Sky gasped and shouted to her friends, "we're going to fly ikran!"

words: about 2000


	19. BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 4)

BECOMING FRIENDS WITH THE NA'VI (PART 4)  
\----

A Omatikayan strolled by a tree in the woods that dwarfed him to a chess piece. He paused, lunged backwards, and leapt over one of the tree's bulging roots. He cheered alone, and then he strolled on his usual way.

Floating up, eyes could see the tree thrived with taller cousins that almost touched the daylight that brightened the forest. Past canopy, the tree's centuries stacked and laddered and cemented and weaved and zoomed up to the tree's middle, which unraveled in branches that touched the clouds sailing by. Higher, the tree flourished in blue sky, then blue-white sky, and suddenly the tree flowered in a green crown. Just underneath, a single branch screwed right.

Ree'ahn leapt to the branch and pulled up Victoria, who was exhausted from climbing. To the cloudless sky at the peak of the afternoon, he called for his ikran in a nasally vibration he created from his nostrils and top palate. He gave his attention to the Dreamwalker he chose to supervise. "You are called," Ree'ahn's lips fished around strange vowels. "Vik-tor-weeya?"

There was no answer when Victoria accepted his hand and cleaned her hair of branches and leaves. Victoria watched her friends nearby. Tanner could be heard from a location below with Piral. The medic made a decision with Piral on which tree was the least dangerous to climb for their inexperience. Sky appeared she was getting along with Itoyo well at the summit of another tree a few meters away from Victoria, and Victoria was jealous of their friendly chemistry. The last thing Victoria had expected from another secret outing outside of the base gates was to be separate from her friends and stuck with a Na'vi like the one in front of her.

Ree'ahn ignored her silence and tensed his face. He continued, "oel ngati kameie, Victoria." The next words he knew would be awkward, but it must have been what she wanted to hear from him: an apology for the day before. Since Ree'ahn had no clue how to convey his small feelings of remorse for his actions in English, Ree'ahn muttered in Na'vi , "I should have never yelled at you or raised my hands to you, and I am sorry that I made you cry..."

All of a sudden, Victoria felt as light as a feather. Her boots failed to balance her on the branch hundreds of feet above ground and she screamed.

Ree'ahn immediately lunged for her body.

Victoria yelped as her gravity topsy-turvied and she flailed in-air. A strong hand fisted her forearm until she was yanked upright on the tree branch. Ree'ahn centered her on the tree in front of him. Three fingers of the warrior dug into her skin and his forefinger clenched around the back of her wrist.

Victoria watched Ree'ahn's big and round gold eyes settle from shock and mold into a bothered but earnest expression. When she focused on them and centered her balance, she knew she would never fall to her death as long as he was there to catch her. But did they have to be so close? Victoria protested his hold on her arm.

Ree'ahn quit the Dreamwalker's squirming by unhanding her roughly. He finished, "Accept my apology and pretend it never happened."

Victoria massaged her wrist. She made a conscious effort to keep her feet close together. The view below them was a haze of blurry green. "Listen, what's-your-name," Victoria spoke with an edge. She understood some of what he had said, and it hadn't been enough to convince her he was truly sorry. "You can keep the apology." Her legs swayed to keep still at the center of the branch.

Ree'ahn was sure he just heard Victoria speak for the first time that day, but the voice could not have possibly come from the same female he had met before. He faced her behind him on the branch and he asked, "kempe?"

"People like you will only say sorry when someone else tells them to, and they'll never mean it. No. I don't forgive you," she finished. Her profile stayed to the horizon of sunny forest peaks in the distance. It took all her willpower to not glance down past her feet, or she would feel like she was weightless on a merry-go-round from the height which Ree'ahn had led her. Her friends were still waiting with their partners in the surrounding treetops for their partners' ikran. Victoria believed her friends did not notice how much she wished she could switch companions with them.

Ree'ahn looked to the topview of the cliff's woodlands Victoria was facing. He had seen Victoria look that way earlier when she had come from her village and trailed behind her friends into his land. Although Victoria had looked intrigued at the landscape like her friends when they all had arrived without warning in the clan for the second time, Ree'ahn had thought Victoria looked lost in her thoughts, lonely, and misunderstood. However, Ree'ahn thought the Dreamwalker's attitude suited her much better than her silence had for most of the day. Her spite to him from moments ago showed a side of her that he was willing to believe in.

"It is good," Ree'ahn said, "to see the real you now come out."

Victoria turned her chin to Ree'ahn in curiosity.

Ree'ahn left no comment on his reasoning to speak his mind. He continued in English with a simper, "Your words do not scare me, demon. Warriors with mouths like you are what I eat for my morning meal. Before you leave from here, you will agree to my apology." He went on, "I think we did not greet correct. Oeru syaw eyktanay. That say, I am one who sits at right of eyktan you call Tsu'tey.

"Today, it can be a good ride with this one. Hogi is ikran, that likes to play." Ree'ahn's eyes lit with something hidden as he fixed his maktoband over his eyes. "But, this day will only be good, if you do as I will say only."

Victoria felt hesitant to comply with his commands, but she felt like she had no option to disagree.

Ree'ahn looked content at her weak nod. "We will fly to Atxktxe Koak. That say, "old man's land", because many of the old find what heals them there. It is good that we came to Renéharper. With that you wear now, Victoria, there will be no problem for you and your friends, and no one will ask who you are." At least for the day, Ree'ahn knew, Victoria looked like a regular Omatikayan woman. She looked much better than she had in her clothes from earlier. "The pxen is good on you."

Victoria looked to her chest covering.

However, the Dreamwalker's lack of honors or hair beads made her look like an overgrown child, Ree'ahn concluded to himself. He turned his attention to the faraway shadow approaching him from the sky.

Victoria frowned. She felt embarrassed that his short-lived approval had brought the slightest warmth to her cheeks. Then, she looked in awe when she saw the creature that had finally arrived to them.

A bark-like call sounded in the sky. A golden-yellow ikran flew onto the branch supporting Ree'ahn and Victoria and landed beside Ree'ahn, whom it had known since Ree'ahn had been a teenaged Na'vi who had cowered in front of it upon their first meeting in the rocks of the ikran's home of Ayram-alsuing. Ree'an appeared hyperrealistically in the ikran's four pale-colored eyes, which were arranged in twos on both sides of its head. The ikran made a final settlement on the branch as its makto approached him warmly. The ikran made a display of itself by flaring its wings that were speckled with dark spots.

Ree'ahn greeted the ikran fondly. The fingers of the Na'vi felt warm and solid on the ikran's beak. To the ikran, it smelled his makto had walked the forests for some time that day. The creature was jovial and its excitement was contained in a smile-like gesture that opened its jaws with two unfolding rows of sharp teeth.

Victoria was speechless. Ikrans looked otherwordly at a distance, but up close they were royal beyond imagination. The attenae of the ikran moved with attention on their own, and the muscles of the reature flexed powerfully under thick skin as gorgeous and yellow as a field of marigolds.

Ree'ahn addressed his ikran, Hogi, in the sturdy place between its eyes with a pat-pat-pat of his hands. The ikran's pupils lasered on him. Ree'ahn roved his hands before Hogi's vision and the ikran's head snaked to follow the close scent of his makto's palm. The ikran's snout jerked when Ree'ahn yanked his hand high out of sight. Hogi piped in irriation as Ree'ahn laughed to himself. Ree'ahn took hold of his tswin and gently held his ikran's atennae. The nerve endings of Ree'ahn's tswin osillated peacefully towards the cosmic force of the ikran's neurons that were exposed at the tail of its attenae. In a swift autonomous motion, the nerves of the Na'vi and ikran melded. Ree'ahn's ikran shivered its spine and crowed welcomingly. Ree'ahn's mind buzzed with synapses from Hogi's active brain. Ree'ahn sensed Hogi's hesitation when Hogi lowered his thin head to wager if Ree'ahn wanted visible permission to climb aboard his back, where the warrior had left his packsaddle since the last time they had flown together. Ree'ahn basked in the feeling of their connection in a youthful smile and then he ducked under his ikran's wing to hoist himself onto Hogi's spine. Hogi's wings alerted slightly and rested in upward fans before Victoria's feet.

Ree'ahn's feet found the most comfortable spot to rest on opposite sides of Hogi's neck. Ree'ahn seemed bothered that he wouldn't enjoy his flight alone. His eyes were shadowed to Victoria by the brow linings of his maktoband that resembled a Vampire mask of dark jewels and twigs. He sighed, "kiva ko."

Victoria, bummed that there was no instruction for her to climb onto Hogi correctly, surveyed Ree'ahn's gear for the footstool he had used. She found it and pushed up on her heels, but missed and grabbed hold of Hogi again. On her third try, she topped Ree'ahn's ikran with a grunt. It felt funny to feel the bones of Hogi's ribcage puff in and out under his warm and leathery skin. Hogi's talons clicked madly on the wood of the branch and wobbled his passengers over the height above the Omatikayan forest. Victoria's body pinned-and-needled with adrenaline, and she reached without restraint around Ree'ahn's body and shut her eyes.

Ree'ahn hesitated with his grip upon Hogi's attenae to tell Victoria, "hold more tight, if you do not want to die."

Victoria wrestled with the idea of trusting someone who had no shame in making her weep, and worse, holding him because her life depended on it. But she did as she was asked.

Ree'ahn straightened. He called once for Hogi to fly.

A scream sprung from Victoria's belly to her nose as they both plunged from the tree on Hogi. Wind volcanoed by Victoria's ears. Victoria's hands were crushed in a sandwich of muscle, and her cheek pancaked on the hot skin of Ree'ahn's back. His hair hammered her head like a swarm of locusts as they fell.

Ree'ahn caterwauled, and then Victoria's whole body vibrated when the beast squalled in return. The ikran's wings accordioned to its body and it dived as Ree'ahn had asked. She felt Ree'ahn's feet lock her ankles with his on their descent.

When Hogi had reached enough speed, Ree'ahn willed him mentally to float in the air. The ikran's wings suddenly bloomed, and they were both yanked upward. Finally, Hogi planed forward in a crest. All motion stopped.

Victoria's eyes opened. Right then, she looked down beneath them.

Another shriek rocketed from Victoria's throat like vomit. A number of miles below their locked feet, a carpet of dark green and indigo snailed by on the ground. The ikran coasted above a cosmic bubble that stretched over the entire territory. Victoria's head felt like a balloon that could burst if she inhaled too quickly. She finally caught her breath and closed her eyes again.

Victoria yelped when Hogi flapped his wings. She heard cackles fading in to her ears. Ree'ahn's laughter tumbleweeded to whines and he released his passenger's feet to hang freely.

Victoria's breath was several times louder in her ears, and so was every other noise around her, like the blocky sounds of Ree'ahn's knives, sheathed, that flagged from a tie on his waist, and the jostle of the poison-arrow-stickpile behind her.

Victoria thought that if she stretched high enough, she could touch the sky like a ceiling. Big clouds levitated before her eyes as elephant toothpaste. Others had been swiped with a dry paintbrush against blue. To either side, both of Hogi's wings looked longer than they had in the tree. His yellow wings tuned in and out to balance them.

A wet fog flew through Victoria and she triple-blinked to see Ree'ahn's hair trill in front of her once again. She realized she had just tasted a cloud. It tasted like electricity. Her tongue stung, and she made a face of confusion and slight pain.

Ree'ahn glanced to landmarks that pegged his path to the outskirts. A rose and white ikran glided in sight at his side, and Ree'ahn saluted to the freshman of the Circle with a nod.

Itoyo nodded back to Ree'ahn with a huge smile on his face. His ikran, Kä, glided to Itoyo's commands in the air like a kite. Sky was enjoying her ride with Itoyo because he made her feel safe to board his ikran, which was only a dream to Sky before that day. Kä was a beauty, and the ikran only caused Sky to regret even more that she had no camera with her.

On the warriors' route, some trees in their vision sheared to shrubs and then flattened to an enormous lake, the mother of every water body and waterfall of the Omatikaya's territory, which appeared past an edge of forest. Sky saw a glare on the water's surface as if it were a giant mirror.

It was the only body of water that Itoyo had seen for the longest time. He saw a glimpse of home.

Sky flew along with Itoyo with the heavy smell of a wetland filling her nose. "What do you call this lake?" She asked the warrior as she looked down at it.

"Nifkeytongay..." Truthfully, Itoyo mumbled with a quiet breath of laughter, "I could not tell you, Skypatel. I am not of this clan. I hail from the banshee clan." With a single hand, Itoyo touched his choker of rings in meaning.

"I understand." Sky said. She kept a shameful thought to herself that it was hard to tell the clans apart. "What is it like there?" Sky would never have the chance again for years to interview a Na'vi because of the lengthy trip she would soon take to Earth.

"The land, the sea, the smell of the air every morning, it was gorgeous. The water there is so clear, you can see to the bottom of it!" Itoyo said with humility, "The water here is dirty, and very small compared to what I am used to."

"Is this clan that different from where you come from?"

"The banshee clan was less peaceful, but I liked always having something to do. I had no family to pass the time with, so, my whole life, I served it as a tsamsiyu." Itoyo admits, "I am an orphan, Dreamwalker, but my clan has always been my family, and I miss them very much."

"How did you end up here?"

"Tsu'tey has remembered me from the war, and has selected me to be promoted if I came to this clan. I chose to leave for myself; my old leader was very demanding and unfair to me." Itoyo's voice lifted. "But now, I have a new duty, to these people, and I think, with time, I will have a new family here as well." Itoyo responded friendly to Sky's sound of concern.

Itoyo didn't believe it would be so easy to befriend a Skyperson, but the whole day had proved otherwise. He had found himself ever curious about Sky's studies of his planet's animals during their walk to Renéharper, and he had enjoyed their pleasant argument about the best-tasting fruits of the clan with Piral and Sky's other friends in the orchard. During their ascent up the tree to meet his ikran, Sky had shown she was willing to trust him and work hard to reach the top. Now, as they flew together on Kä, he felt she would have been the best company to fly with to any corner of Pandora. Skypatel was smart, bubbly, patient and saw the bright side of everything. Itoyo imagined he would have liked to stay friends with her if she was a real Na'vi.

"I like your mask!" Sky mentioned.

Itoyo preened his rider's mask made of loose yet sturdy, green water-reeds and purple shells from the shores of his clan. "I-irayo nìtxan," he replied with a reserved bow of his head in front of Skypatel.

Sky smiled at how adorable the warrior was and hugged his middle like a Na'vi-sized plushie. Kä made a call to the grey and black ikran who appeared in view at a short distance from them and she drove forward.

Tanner balanced on the ikran who was controlled under the hand of Piral. From the moment Tanner had met Piral around the fire in the Circle of Warriors, he knew that she would be someone who was hard to disagree with, because he could tell she had the ability to make others believe they were capable of anything. He had realized this, too, on the group's walk to locate the best tree to meet Piral's ikran, Pao. Because Pao was elderly and liked low heights, the tree had to have a strong trunk and a short stature. Piral revealed to them that those trees were rare in the clan and cumbersome to find, and it would not be a short search for the three. From Piral's care of the place where her ikran would land to her call, Tanner had knew she had much care for Pao's comfort.

Piral had led Tanner behind her as she had gave each tree in their vicinity a quiet interview. The silence from Piral had been sudden, since Piral had been very talkative around Tanner at a speed that only allowed for minimal understanding by him. Yet, her voice had used a bright tone that invited lots of smiles from him to ease any nerves he had felt for flying. A short while had passed, but then Piral's grin had replaced her pensive frown. "Follow!" Piral had arfed to the Tanner as she began to climb a perfect tree.

After Piral's quick glance to Tanner ,who remained unmoving, Tanner had admitted to Piral, "I've been in choppers before, but flying on an ikran is kinda not the same thing. Do you think we'll be okay?" He had called in Piral's tongue to her body working up the tree trunk, "I am afraid!"

Piral had heard Tanner shout to her from a meter below. She looked Tanner and in his eyes and replied, "I would not ask you to follow me if I knew you were not safe." At the top of the tree, Tanner had looked proud of himself, just as Piral knew he would.

When Piral had warned Tanner that Pao was an elderly ikran and would not take kindly to sudden movements, he hadn't understood what she had meant. Then, high in the air, it was clear. The slightest flex of Tanner's feet over the groundless and moving sky made the ikran vocalize or flap his wings. Piral warned Tanner to keep still or Pao would feel threatened by Tanner and toss him from his back.

Piral kept her chin steady on the land beneath she and her passenger searched for Atxktxe Koak. Piral's maktoband looked like a fantastical crown. It had three straight horns of twisted canes; two were parallel on the opposite poles of her ears and one horn stood straight in the middle. There was no artwork or embellishements like the bands of the other warriors, but the pattern that Piral's mask was weaved gave the mask all the presence it needed on her face to intimidate anyone in the sky. Today, Piral was less focused on an attack and more relaxed.

"Kame tsatsenge!" Piral finally said to Tanner. They held on tightly as Pao curtailed to a heavily wooded area with an array of bright and multishaped plants and some roaming Na'vi. She heard the calls of Kä and Hogi follow her swiftly.

Tanner, Sky, and Victoria shared one fear as they descended to the grounds: what would happen if the Na'vi discovered who they were?


	20. ONE LIFE ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS (FINALE: PART ONE)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake, Tsu'tey, and Neytiri set off to find Tsu'tey's Avatar friends. Meanwhile, Victoria, Tanner, and Sky regroup from their errands with the warriors and eat lunch with Dr. Rene Harper. Suddenly, they are interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember Itoyo and Piral can't speak English (again it's just really tedious to add all the formatting.) Plus, Neytiri chooses to speak to Tsu'tey in Na'vi. :) thanks

ONE LIFE ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS (FINALE: PART ONE)  
\----

Tsu'tey and Jake and Neytiri hiked into the forest in their search of the Dreamwalkers who they suspected were infiltrating the clan. The day was warm and sunny. The trees were illuminated with morning rays and they sparkled with life as the Pandorian breeze tussled them gently in graceful sways alongside other enormous trees.

The day was no different from any other tranquil afternoon in the clan. The clanspeople carried a serenity in their work that mimicked the nature surrounding them.

As Jake walked among his people with Neytiri and his newest adviser, Tsu'tey, he waved his hand in his human-like way to Omatikayans who were lugging woven baskets that were stuffed with gathered flora. Neytiri acknowledged others who looked as if they had just finished the first meal of the day and were scouting out interesting and well visited places in the clan to spend their afternoon until they had to continue their less-fun obligations to sustain their livelihoods in the forest.

Jake was wearing ornamental pieces, such as his paulets of brown ferns, his decorated bodice around his waist of a leathery and firm material, and Eytukan's former head pendant of a thick, beige leaf that pasted in between and slightly higher than his eyes. Jake's uniform rustled noisily on his body as he continued through the forest path's cool grasses in front of Neytiri and Tsu'tey. Neytiri trailed behind wearing only some of her royal trinkets in favor of her weathered warrior ornaments, which appeared as twisted necklaces, a collar of muted-green stones that only the bravest female warriors were honored with, and some miscellaneous wrappings around her ankle. Her father's bow was securely strapped to her body from its string.

Tsu'tey wore his red mowarsiyu shawl that was handweaved slightly shorter for males, and he had bound his hair in a usual height from shoulders for the search. From the looks of the forest, Tsu'tey saw they were approaching the common gathering grounds near the place where René Harper liked to stay. Neytiri noticed this too. She had the same expression on her face as Tsu'tey when they looked at each other in jovial memory of their teacher from many years ago.

"They would not have come this far, would they? Maybe we should turn back," Neytiri sighed. "This is the most walking we have done since the time we left to find your direhorse after it bucked you and ran off." Neytiri fired a loud giggle and held a grin at the memory of Tsu'tey painted with moldy tree leaves and mud.

"Tiri," Tsu'tey whispered sharply, out of habit. He thought he might have went too far into the forest to try to find his Dreamwalker friends that he hoped had not returned into the forest. Tsu'tey did not know what Jake had planned to do if he ever saw them.

Jake made no comment on their familiar exchange, but made note of it mentally. Neytiri didn't object to Tsu'tey's romantic nickname Tsu'tey must have once called her, which Jake secretly understood. "Harper will know if they were by here. Keep an eye out for 'im." Jake ordered both of them.

"Tam, tam." Neytiri said immediately and softly in confirmation behind Jake. She grasped his bicep to keep up with his pace. Tsu'tey frowned at that, but he was left with neutral feelings about witnessing their intimacy as friends outside of being only royal partners.

Tsu'tey lingered behind for a moment to recuperate from the long walk. He thought Neytiri could be correct. They had gone very far out from the mainlands to find the Dreamwalkers and convince them to stay inside of their territory. Tsu'tey was intrigued by Jake's determination to locate them, yet Tsu'tey knew Jake must have had a reasonable rationale for wanting to speak to them personally. In many ways, he was the best person to face them. Even more so than myself, Tsu'tey thought.

Following the Great Battle, Jake had been extremely protective of the Omatikaya people. Jake did not ever want to see a single Skyperson or Avatar inside of the clan without his expressed permission. He did not trust a single person other than those that he chose as worthy to be in the clan: Normspellman and Maxpatel.

Jake was suspicious of what other people from the RDA would do if they had the chance to reenter the clan. Their plans were unknown and even the most well-meaning people could change their intentions at the last minute. Human nature, Jake knew, was fickle. He had been a victim of that fallacy in humankind as well. For, not too long ago, he had been fully willing to secretly exploit the Omatikaya by learning all of their ways and seeing the inner structures of their homestead so that he could report it all back to Colonel Quaritch and in exchange he would have received a fully paid operation by the actions of the colonel to restore his legs and no longer be be confined to a wheelchair.

Tsu'tey heard something peculiar, suddenly. He let Neytiri and Jake continue forward. Tsu'tey heard it again, and he gathered Jake and Neytiri to come close to him. It was the sound of Ree'ahn...laughing.

Jake could clearly hear other familiar voices combining joyously. There was an older voice speaking, then, and Neytiri recognized it as Renéharper's

"They cannot be far away from here," Tsu'tey relayed to Jake.

Kä and Hogi pocketed their wings from the place their maktos had deboarded them and they flew to their mountain home after Pao. The expanse of the gathering grounds where the Avatars and the warriors arrived was full of trees and bushes with specific plants for healing or practical use by the Omatikaya. The area was blanketed over with flora from rustling treetops that downcasted the location in darkness. Between the posts of the tree trunks, daylight shone through and illuminated the warm greens, yellows, pinks, and browns of the forest floor. A secluded waterway appeared below the overpass they stood on to view the grounds. Sky predicted had originated from the large lake she had saw during her flight on Kä with Itoyo. The water made tiny trickling sounds as it flowed past rocks and fallen twigs or logs in its path. The Avatars and the warriors treaded along the modest sized canal on a raised platform that was covered in greenery that trapped the heat from the sun in its soil. Overhead, forest creatures called to each other in buzzing or clicking noises, and in unknown parts of the forest, bigger land animals made themselves known to their kind with their own rumbling noises or hissing frequencies that were completely foreign to the Avatars' ears. The Avatars learned that theNantang, with their highly distinctive snickering sounds and dog-like pants, also had found a habitat in those lesser-known parts of the woods in which the warriors had flown them to, and they were excellent at staying hidden from everyone's view.

Tanner rejoined with Sky and Victoria as the warriors converged together with their filled meshpacks from their ikran's gear that were brimmed with their harvest of plants they picked with the Dreamwalkers for the day.

Victoria trudged forward with a basket of leafy growths slung on her back, in the same way as her two friends on either side of her.

"Are you sure you don't need help?" Tanner asked Victoria.

Victoria shook her head. Tanner could barely handle the weight of his own collection.

The warriors led them back to Dr. Harper's camp. Meanwhile, they spoke amongst themselves in their own language.

"I'm really glad I came." Victoria spoke up, to her friends' pleasant surprise. "Sorry I didn't trust you at first, Sky."

"Don't worry about it," Sky replied. "we were taking a pretty big risk coming back."

"A risk of a lifetime." Tanner said. He happily scanned the atmosphere at the tall trees and vibrant plantlife around them. He took a deep, refreshing breath. He could smell the river at the foot of the plateau that they walked on, and an incense of decaying leaves and perfume from Pandorian flowers hung in the air.

"I kinda feel bad for everyone else," Victoria admitted, talking about the few other Avatar drivers who still had not stepped foot outside the gates of the RDA base.

"Their loss."

"Tanner!" Sky chuckled with a pointed look to the surgeon. Vicky had a point, she thought. The other Avatars would never have any idea what they were missing by always following the rules.

Victoria chortled. She was slowly starting to enjoy their day out since her flight on Hogi with Ree'ahn. The farther that she and her friends were from the RDA base, the more secure she felt about her decision to join them and the less fear she had about being caught by Jake. No one could predict how he would react to seeing RDA members other than Norm and Max in the clan.

Tanner continued as he and his friends followed the three warriors through the gathering grounds, "just imagine how it would be like to live here. No school, no job, no rent due next month, no more vaccumed meals. We would just...live. And, you could have your own flying dragon for the rest of your life!"

"I'm sure it's not that easy," Sky said. "Living like this might take a lot of sacrifices."

"Sure, but, I would take any one of their spots any day," Tanner said to everyone as he pointed once at the group of three warriors heading them. "Wouldn't you?"

Sky wished to agree, but then she thought of her long years of studying to meet the requirements for his profession as an extraterrestrial vet. It had been a miracle that she had been chosen to be a recruit for the RDA's second mission to Pandora, even though it had just ended in an all out war. She wouldn't want to give up on a possibility to return to the RDA for a third mission after all she had worked for in residency and basic training.

It had been enough of a struggle to start her career on Earth, since the labor market was controlled by artificial intellegence who weeded out who was predicted to be the most useful to society. It made little difference to such non-living entities of how long a student had studied and strived to be the best. The careers of all people on Earth were determined by a global evaluation by a large, quantum algorithim. A single evaluation separated those who would depend on Earth's multinational rations for survival from others who went on to be active parts of managing Earth's future society from total collapse and furthering the destiny of Humanity in outer space.

Parker Selfridge was no simple businessman; he had been a prime selection of the global algorithim to head the Resource Development Association. Parker made all final decisions on who would be RDA staff and was not known to make a mistake for placing any soldier, scientist, physician, receptionist or intern incorrectly. Due to Parker's decision, Sky had found a positive work-life balance with the RDA and a stability with the company. It didn't help that she had fallen in love with him at a point in her life that she couldn't remember. Her engagement to Parker promised her a life of reasonable comfort on Earth, an idea which was quickly becoming a dream for many Humans left to live there in its zero hour. She wasn't sure if she could leave that all behind.

René Harper stood from his crouch by his fire when he saw the Avatars and the warriors. He helped them settle their packs on the ground and he allowed them to join him in eating the small game that Piral had hunted for him at his request. It was a hard-to-catch Srakat from the river that released a savory smell when Itoyo nursed it with René over the fire.

"Do not turn it so much, teacher, it must burn some to taste the best." Ree'ahn said.

"I could say the same for you." Dr. Harper replied.

Ree'ahn and Piral laughed together, sounding to Sky like two Nantangs. It was easy for all of them around the small firepit to join in.

Itoyo presented a piece of Srakat to Sky and settled beside her.

Sky took the morsel. Srakat were fish-like species that behaved like Earth's Pirahna of the Amazon Rainforest. It had a hard shell that Sky doubted would soften to her liking. Nevertheless, she gave her portion a try. The skin from the game melted in her mouth. She wiped her mouth clean of the hot juices that tasted of freshwater and smoke. She wished she could ask Itoyo for a napkin.

"There is an easier way to eat it, Skypatel," Itoyo chuckled. He and Piral stuffed their modest pieces into their mouth, and then they steadily pulled out the bone fillet. Then, it wasn't hard to clean their own mouths with their lips.

"That would have been a lot more helpful thirty seconds ago," Tanner admitted to Sky who was still looking impressed.

"It doesn't matter how you eat it," René encouraged Sky. He thought the group's debrief was the perfect time to continue sharing about his experience with joining the clan after the first assault by the RDA on the clan's school.

René Harper introduced his memories from his first meeting with the Dreamwalkers, and Victoria tuned in next to Tanner.

"How was it to fly?" Another voice beside Victoria said.

Victoria noticed Ree'ahn had asked her a question. It sounded more like an accusation. She looked to her friends for assurance of how to answer him, but they were too busy listening to Piral. Ree'ahn kept focused on his task of picking bones. He looked to Victoria like he didn't care if she answered or not, yet he was interested in what decision she would make. Victoria hemmed to herself and muttered back, "I don't know." It was scary...but amazing, she thought.

Ree'ahn scoffed, but at the end, his lips were left in a tame expression of satisfaction. "Sran," he mumbled. He looked admirably at his working hands in remembrance of Hogi who had probably left for home with Kä and Pao for the rest of the day. "Hogi lives for three years. To the ikran, he is like to the age we are. There is not time for him to fly slow."

Victoria smiled at that.

"You would learn to like Hogi, I think, if there is more time you will have here."

Victoria kept her ears open for anything else his voice would add in their conversational space. When Ree'ahn stayed quiet, she thought of speaking about something they both knew from the talks they shared before in his room of the kelku. There was the subject of his mysterious totems, or his little sister-which seemed to have brightened him the most.

"Um," Victoria started. She was mildly shocked when Ree'ahn's ear moved slightly like she activated it. His golden eyes moved digitally to anticipate what she was preparing to say. Victoria wanted to ask about his sister, but then René spoke from across the small fire and ended their soliloquy.

"We've got company," René said, standing as Jake, Neytiri, and Tsu'tey came near his camp.

Words: 2581 Next: One Life Ends, Another Begins (Finale Part Two)


	21. FINAL CHAPTER: ONE LIFE ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS (FINALE: PART TWO)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final part to Part 1. It took me from 2019 to now to finish, but I'm glad it was rewritten successfully. Thank you so much for reading. Please leave kudos and comments and ask me any questions.

At the bombed site of Hometree near the tree coven that Jake and Neytiri stayed, a collection of branches that used to create the inner spiral of Hometree all remained as barbs from the generational pillars they once were. The plantlife in the area was torched black. Any green that had managed to replenish itself around the wooden ruins contrasted brightly from the woods. Dust billowed from the ravaged trunks in winds that passed. Mo'at coughed slightly at some of the broken branches' particles she inhaled in a second breeze while she sat in place on the ground and took in the atmosphere of the late noon. She mourned the place that the common site of the clan used to be. While most her people still preferred to socialize and eat at the site of their ancestral tree when night came, a presence of sorrow had never quite left the place.

Mo'at missed Hometree's colossal branches that shielded her first seconds of awakeness from the bright morning Suns since she was a child, or the cool nightshade the branches kept over everyone when the moon and stars took the Suns' place. For now, Mo'at's people were doing their best to cope. The people had fashioned new Hammocks to sleep in and tied the beds to other trees that weren't too far from the roots of Hometree. The beds of string were not as high as they once were, like most Omatikaya preferred them to be for a closer view of the night sky, but they were functional.

The long term, Mo'at was sure, would call for them to resettle in a new tree to call home for themselves, their children, and their children's children, just like the Omatikaya had lived for thousands of years. Mo'at inhaled again. She took everything in. The sweet oils of re-growing treelife, the stench from old fire and flaming arrows from the Skypeople's flying ships, the dew from the new underbrush, the Skypeople's metal shrapnel that still lodged itself unknown, and the earthy smell of soil underneath her. She smelled the forest's sorrow and its growth. There was always growth.

Na'vi passed through the largely abandoned site and made presses in the grass that alerted Mo'at's ears while she meditated. In one of the bypassing groups of girls from the village was Mi'nat, who had arrived too early to continue Jake's singing lessons.

"Mo'at!", Mi'nat said happily when she saw the former Tshaik. She promised her two friends that she would come back to follow them to the river to swim and cool from the heat.

Mo'at recognized the young daughter of the clan's oldest and most respected family of weavers immediately. "Kaltxì, ma 'evi," Mo'at welcomed.

"Kaltxì!" Mi'nat said. She looked confused. The other older women who should have also arrived before time to teach Jake their village's songs were nowhere to be found.

"Jake cannot sing with us today. I was told to wait for him until he returns."

"Why must you wait, teacher?"

"If only I could answer," Mo'at smiled. "Neytiri has also not explained this to me. But, she has told me something interesting: she asked me to not be upset when they do return."

Mi'nat bent beside Mo'at and sat on the soil. "Then, I will wait, too."

"Nonsense! You will go play with your friends. They are waiting."

"You cannot wait all alone. You will be lonely."

"You are certainly your mother's daughter," Mo'at complained about Mi'nat's stubbornness. "Go, now. Life is too short to not enjoy it when you are young."

Mi'nat's friends shifted when more Na'vi from the village began to congregate around the site rapidly. Voices rose in interest as more Omatikaya jogged in site to view the commotion.

"Mother, I want to hide!" A child cried.

"Fwew ayfol!" Look at them!, said a curious middle-aged Na'vi to his friends who had followed the crowd after the Avatars.

"Jakesully!" One of Mi'nat's friends cheered. Jake Sully tapped her head lovingly as he passed her, but quickly replaced his focused expression as he and his followers neared Mo'at.

"What is happening?" Mi'nat asked Mo'at.

Mo'at took Mi'nat's hand and followed the gaze of the audience that had now become tens in number. Mo'at saw Jake and Neytiri and Tsu'tey leading Renéharper, three of the clan's Tsamsiyu, and three unknown Skypeople in Na'vi bodies. Mo'at inmediately knew they were foreigners because they moved unsurely the closer they came to the grounds of Hometree. Mo'at was surprised to see Norm Spellman and Max Patel with them also.

The Avatars were surprised to see what Jake had become. He looked respected and regal among the Omatikayans as he led them to their unclear destination. Along the way, however, Jake was friendly to the Avatars and gave them big reminders that his Human soul that they were aware of from before the Great Battle was very much alive in his new Na'vi form. His calm attitude put the Avatars somewhat at ease.

The Avatars thought it was jarring to walk in their forms along Max and Norm, who both wore breathable masks and toted automatic weapons like security guards. Luckily, Norm and Max didn't make any moves to use force on the Avatars. Stern looks from both scientists were the only confrontations the Avatars faced so far. Dr. René Harper and the Omatikayan warriors in Tsu'tey's lead treaded obediently to the destination, but couldn't stop sharing unsure looks with the Avatars. Sky thought they, especially Tsu'tey, all looked guilty in some form that they had not protected them from being seen by their clan leaders.

"Do not be afraid," Tsu'tey spoke again to Sky, Tanner and Victoria. "One more time, you all are not in trouble with us."

Neytiri supported Tsu'tey's earnest plea for his friend's understanding. "We have always taken unknown visitors in clan to Mother. I am Tsahik now, but my training is not over. Mother will decide the will of Eywa."

"The will of Eywa?" Tanner questioned aloud. Unexpectedly, Jake answered after being mostly brief-worded for the entire length of the journey to the ruins of Hometree.

"It'll make sense soon," Jake said. "Don't be scared of Mo'at. She's only going to ask you a few questions of why you're here, and then we'll decide what happens next." Jake explained that it was customary for all tresspassers in the clan to be placed on trial. "Be a hundred percent honest with the dragonlady. She can see through you like a plastic bag."

Ree'ahn, Itoyo, and Piral followed René Harper when Neytiri corralled them together as witnesses. Neytiri startled when Mi'nat rushed from Mo'at to cling to Ree'ahn as he shuffled beside the other warriors.

Victoria met Mi'nat's eyes. Ree'ahn returned a placid look. He felt neutral about Victoria recognizing his sister he had mentioned. Ree'ahn whispered at Mi'nat to be quiet when she kept asking him what was going to happen next.

Neytiri met her four fingers to her temple to greet Mo'at, speaking, "Oel ngati kameie, ma sanok."

Mo'at chuckled in the quiet before the crowd and her daughter. "Why did you bring these Skypeople here, again? Was there another sign from Eywa?"

"No," Jake said to Mo'at and all of his people, causing slight confusion and ruahed murmurs. He allowed Max and Norm to state their case.

"We were on a patrol of the site outside the RDA barracks, Mo'at, and we found these three, including my sister, wandering our land with no permission from Jake." Max began in his speech to the people. Neytiri translated the message swiftly for those who did not understand.

Sky bit her lip hesitantly when her little brother, Max, gave her a pointed look. Max and Norm stayed observant of the other Avatars before them. Whispers from the mass of Na'vi villagers filled the silence.

Norm continued, "We discovered Jake and Neytiri and Tsu'tey were also looking for breachers in the territory. It has come to our knowledge that Tsu'tey has been the first to see these Avatars, and he has not reported them on his first sighting."

The Avatars watched on when Tsu'tey bowed slightly before his former mother-in-law and spoke in Na'vi with resignation to the ground, "It is my fault for not turning them away before. Please do not think bad of them, or of me. They are good-hearted Skypeople and will leave in peace if you ask."

Mo'at took in the information from her clan's human ally, Max, and theorized why his statement was true. Tsu'tey was very loyal to the clan's customs. Surely he had protected them because he had been friends with them in some form. "They will not be sent away so quickly," Mo'at reasoned. "They could have reasons to be here that we do not know. I trust them, because Tsu'tey trusts them." Mo'at looked to Tsu'tey and René Harper, the clan's oldest Skyperson who had learned their ways long ago. They both looked ready to speak for the three Avatars and explain the Avatars' true intentions for going against Jake's orders to not enter the clan and leave Pandora on schedule with the RDA. "Neither of you will speak on their behalf!" Mo'at declared.

"Ma Tsahik..." Piral cheeped from her place near Neytiri.

"And neither will any of you!" Mo'at said to the warriors. "These Skypeople will answer to me."

Tanner's eyes shifted away from Piral when Mo'at stalked his way. He couldn't hear a pin drop when she boomed to him, "what are you called?!"

"Uhh," Tanner stuttered. He struggled to remember his own name. He thought he had no choice but to use his full birthname when Mo'at stared at him like she was reading his soul. She removed a needle from her stately headpiece that formed a bar across her collarbone. "Tanner Martinez-Brown? Gah!" Tanner grabbed the place where Mo'at's bone needle for sewing had striked his arm. He was puzzled when Mo'at pinched the needle in her mouth and tasted his blood.

To avoid similar fates, Victoria and Sky quickly stated their names.

Mo'at pondered an unknown thought to herself, and assumed the two other females carried similar traits in their makeup since they were close friends with the male Skyperson. She said next to all three of them, "Why did you come to us?!"

Sky looked squarely to Mo'at, deciphering that they all had one slim chance to be accepted to stay with the clan or be stuck on Earth forever. Although Sky loved Parker and her family, she knew that Earth was lost as a planet and she didn't want to spend her remaining days there. She felt Max's eyes on her and she knew he was coming to terms with what she may decide to do. A feeling of immense sorrow weighed on Sky, and it tightened her throat when she answered Neytiri's mother. "We came...to learn."

Victoria looked to Tanner beside she. They both realized, too, what was happening. Their only other option besides leaving for Earth was staying with the clan before the RDA starship departed not too long from then.

Tsu'tey listened in awe when he heard Sky declare her intent to stay with his people.

"We have taught other Skypeople," Mo'at said. "It is hard to fill a cup which is already full," Mo'at repeated for a third time as she had done with Renéharper and Jakesully. She repeated it because it was truth. Mo'at chose to explain herself that time, since the three looked slightly misunderstanding. "As you were a child in your world, you will become a child again, here. It will not be easy."

"My cup's empty," Victoria said, ending in a whisper, "trust me."

Ree'ahn held Mi'nat's hand as he wondered what Victoria meant. Itoyo and Piral kept their ears open at the scene.

Mo'at took interest in Victoria. Instead, Jake made clearance for himself and spoke in front of everyone to Victoria, "what are you? A soldier? A scientist?" He smiled in patience.

Victoria looked to Jake and saw he was studying her intensely. He had truly changed and she felt she had no authority to explain who she was. She was, honestly, nobody. She wasn't as important to the RDA as her friends, for she was only an intern. She was abandoned by her own mother as a child. She had nothing of true worth to attach to her name. Sky was an amazing scientist, and Tanner was a chief field medic in the RDA. Who was she? Jake waited for her answer patiently.

"I... don't know yet." Victoria admitted, blinking back unexpected tears.

"What has she said?" Mi'nat asked Ree'ahn. She thought it was ridiculous for anyone to not know who they were. All had a purpose in her clan. "That's silly!" Mi'nat yelled at the tall Skywoman, earning some laughs from the tribe at her squeaky outburst. She was annoyed when Ree'ahn urged her to stay silent and listen.

"You can find out, here with us." Jake said in a soft approach to the Avatars. He placed his hands on Victoria's shoulders. He could tell all of them had made up their minds. They would become one of his own people if they accepted the chance he was giving them. "Would you want to learn?"

Victoria looked up into Jake's set and golden eyes. The blue skin around them crinkled. Victoria felt a strange feeling. She felt like she was being welcomed home, like she finally found somewhere she belonged. She and Tanner and Sky agreed, "yes."

Neytiri joined beside Jake to welcome the Avatars' decision with a bright smile.

"Wait," Max blurted. He came to Sky's hip at his human height. "Are you sure about this, Sky?" His voice wavered. He thought of Grace, eho had died in an attempted soul transfer to save her from a fatal wound. "Not everyone can pass into their Avatar bodies. I don't want to lose you!"

Sky nodded, unable to speak. Floods of memories of their family and her fiancee filled her mind. There was no turning back if she decided to undergo a transformation ceremony to separate herself from her human form. "You'll never lose me, Max." Sky embraced him and wept. Norm patted Max on the shoulder and looked in confirmation to Jake.

"I sense this decision is being smiled upon by Eywa. We will hold a ceremony immediately," said Mo'at, who looked pleased beside Jake and Neytiri.

Tsu'tey was flabbergasted by the sudden decision of his friends. They looked determined to leave their old lives behind. There must have been something monumental that happened when he was away, Tsu'tey thought, that pushed them to want to stay in the clan and learn to be Omatikayan. He looked to his warriors and Ree'ahn, who all looked equally dumbfounded. Tsu'tey would ask them more about their decision when there was good time to do so. If it was Eywa's will for them to be accepted, Tsu'tey did not wish to interfere.

Norn spoke up to the Avatars, "if you're all sure about this, you can all stay with Jake here and we'll take care of everything else."

"Thanks, Norm," Jake said. He straightened like he remembered something. "Oh, yeah. Who's going to teach them?" Jake looked hopefully to Neytiri.

"I am sorry; I am too busy now," Neytiri said truthfully.

"I don't mind," René spoke up. He drew attention from the crowd because he had been a silent observer of the trial for a while. He looked at Sky and her human brother who were still hugging and crying. "There is much they must learn from me first, since I used to be in their shoes."

"Kehe, Renéharper; they will be taught as you were taught." Mo'at corrected kindly. It would be better for them to seek counsel with one of their own but be instructed in a new way of life with a native Omatikayan. Neytiri had done well with Jake, but it was true that she would not have the time now to dedicate to the Avatars' resocialization. "Tsu'tey..."

"I will be happy to teach them," Tsu'tey said. Tanner and Victoria showed small smiles of comfort at knowing they would be initiated by someone they trusted and knew personally.

"You will not teach the Skypeople either. You have yet to be rematched with a mate and you have too many responsibilities as a mowarsiyu. You will appoint someone capabale of taking your place."

Kempe?!, Tsu'tey reeled to himself. He thought of Piral, but she would push his friends too hard. Itoyo was very patient, but there was a chance he could be too hesitant to point out anything the Dreamwalkers did wrong, and that was costly if his friends wished to navigate the forests on their own. There was no other choice.

"Ree'ahn'eylan," Tsu'tey spoke smugly. "You will take my place. You will teach them our ways to speak and walk as we do."

Ree'ahn looked wildly to the dozens of eyes that turned his way. He pleaded to Mo'at, "Ma Tsahik, that is not fair! Why me?"

Mo'at raised her hand to the warrior. "It is decided!"

Ree'ahn snarled so loudly it echoed. Mi'nat giggled by his hip.

"Ree'ahn te Tskaha Ree'ahn'itan will teach you our ways. Learn well, Victoria, Sky, and Tanner. Then, we will see if your insanities...can be cured." Mo'at's broad nose fanned upward when she grinned.

Tanner, Sky, and Victoria nodded together, feeling as if their lives were being reborn at that very moment.

END of Act 1


	22. Act 2 Preview: AWAKENING

Sky saw pulsing lights. White, then glittering pink, then grey. She felt a feeling blossom in her soul that felt like seeing her mother at her front door when she had returned from primary school in her Earth country, India. She felt her small legs running into her mother's arms as a little girl and she heard her mother chortle sweetly in her ears as she was twirled around in welcome. Sky felt a similar motherly feeling hug her spirit for a long time, and waves of reassurance coursed through her veins. She knew right then that she had passed some sort of test from the Being that kept Sky enveloped in her presence. 

Sky felt her soul descending gently through galaxies, then star systems, then the sky, and finally her body pressed into soft grass. Her limbs felt longer than normal and more far away from her. The dimension Sky was in slipped away, and she slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was twinkling white lights in a dark-blue setting. Upon further adjustment, the soft face of Neytiri appeared, and then light pink, glowing tendrils swept to-and-fro at the edges of Sky's vision. Sky realized ahe was laying flat on her back under the hood of the Vitrayamokri, the Tree of Souls.

"Ma Jake!" Neytiri's voice cried; her breath picked up with exhilaration. 

Sky's vision sharpened and she saw Neytiri smile wide and beckon someone near her. Quickly, Jake's face appeared in Sky's vigil of the twinkling night sky of Pandora directly above her. At first he looked shocked, and then he chuckled loudly and his lips stretched into a big grin of relief. The lightly- beaded braids from Jake's temples stretched down over Sky's face and almost brushed her cheeks. Sky thought of touching them, but she couldn't yet move her hands. She felt someone's hands squish warmly around hers, and Sky understood in her foggy state that it was Jake doing the action.

"Welcome home," Jake said. Neytiri's and Jake's face stayed peaceful above Sky.

Sky felt long pads of fingers and palms gingerly push her spine forward to sit up straight. She saw her hand on front of her. It was the hand of her Avatar. It was long, slender, and violet-blue, with five fingers. She wiggled her toes, and Neytiri laughed demurely with some others who were surrounding her.

"Now you are one of us," Neytiri assured Sky.

Sky saw her human body coiled in neon-lime roots from the Tree of Souls that were still glowing with spiritual energy from the mass prayer of the entire Omatikayan tribe to transfer all that Sky was into her Avatar body. Her human body's black hair was tassled limply around her olive-brown face. Her lips were closed in finality, and her eyes were also closed like she was sleeping in a dream that would last forever. Sky wanted to hold her human body like a child she had just lost. She began to feel tears well in her eyes. The body before her had been with her all of her life. She had awoken with it every day, she had dresaed itnfor work every week, she had taught it to walk, and she had spoken with its mouth for twenty-seven years, and she had her first kiss in that body. And now she had no choice but to say goodbye to it. It wasn't until she was outside of it that she realized how much she would miss it, and how expertly God had created it. Sky felt other hands from the Omatikayans dry hot tears from her cheeks and console her that everything was going to be fine in their language. Sky let Neytiri take her up to stand and she leaned into her strong body for support. Sky walked forward on shaky legs like she had just emerged from an ocean onto a seashore. She saw Tanner and Victoria in Na'vi form wearing Omatikayan garbs, and immediately Sky sobbed, feeling overwhelmed from happiness and from the gravity of what they had evolved to become. 

Tanner squeezed Sky securely, whispering, "we're out of our minds."

Sky laughed shakily and inhaled another sob. She basked in the feeling of Tanner's strong muscles in his hug of empathy.

Victoria bent down slightly and closed her arms around Sky's shaking form next, saying nothing, but closing her eyes on Sky's shoulder as the hold of them together nestled her worries away.

Tsu'tey came to embrace Sky as well. Sky heard him say in Na'vi, "dry your eyes. This is a happy day for everyone, and for me, ma karyue." My teacher.

Sky gripped him solely, wetting his shoulders. Tsu'tey's cheeks bloomed by Sky's head and Sky felt his sturdy hand clamp on her back atop her tswin. Sky identified the feeling of her Na'vi features as new attaches to the concept of her new body, which she would have to fet used to.

"All of the Skypeople have been granted a second life among us by the All-mother!" Neytiri declared, looking to Mo'at and Jake. 

The Omatikayans before the Tree of Souls cheered. Itoyo smiled as he angled his head to see Sky alive in her new Na'vi form. It was a little hard to see her from where he sat next to Piral and Ree'ahn. The three of them had linked their hands over each other's shoulders, and they had circled together trance-like dance with the entire tribe to awaken the healing powers of the Vitrayamokri for the Avatars' soul transfer. The ritual had been unsuccessful for Grace Augustine, but it had fortunately worked for Sky, Victoria, and Tanner. 

"Fpi Eywa!" My God, Ree'ahn complained to Piral and Itoyo, stretching his arms. His mouth was sticky and dry from chanting prayers, and his torso throbbed from circling left and right for a very long time. Such prayer rituals were uncommon and intensely draining. "You would think we we're raising them from the dead!"

"Shh!" Piral hissed. 

Itoyo and Piral and Ree'ahn listened to Neytiri continue, "Let us welcome them with the best of our meals, and pray their sleep is peaceful."

"Lu hasey!" It is finished, Itoyo sighed coyly. He yawned. He was a bit ashamed to admit he was also incredibly tired from the ritual, but he didn't want to be rude. It was a joyous day for Tsu'tey's friends, and he wanted to be in a good mood to congratulate them when he saw them at the meal. The Omatikayans all around them began to stand and make their way to the Hometree ruins to prepare the night's meal. Itoyo saw some preferred to head for their Hammocks. "You will come to the meal?" Itoyo asked to his standing fellow warriors.

"Sran," Piral said without question.

Ree'ahn leaned his head unsurely. "I do not know." 

"You will miss the chance to dance? You of all of us?!" Piral asked Ree'ahn.

"I will need a long sleep." Ree'ahn said. He looked to Norm and Max who were talking with the theee new entrants to the clan with Jake and Neytiri. "I must be awake early to teach them their first lesson, since Tsu'tey has cursed me to do so."

Itoyo and Piral made a sound of rememberance and pity. 

Piral said, "I remember when I taught you, Little Ree'ahn, when you were only a hunter. There was never a day where your vomit had not spilled on my feet!" She giggled brightly. 

"Oh, Piral, how my heart bleeds for those sweet memories," Ree'ahn sniped.

"It could be fun," Itoyo suggested. "You may also learn something from being their teacher."

Ree'ahn considered that, but refused to dwell on it. "I shall see at dawn. I will see you in the kelku. Leave me alone, Toyo."

Itoyo understood that Ree'ahn didn't wish to be asked anymore questions. He followed Piral to the main site of the clan and left Ree'ahn to his thoughts.


End file.
